Brian, Avery and Allison DeLay are gearing up for the first event for their charity, Donovan Delivers, Nov. 8.
By Amy Macintyre
Early in their relationship, Allison and Brian DeLay didn’t think they wanted to be parents. As newlyweds, they both had careers in finance, and enjoyed traveling to the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. They weren’t ready for the responsibility of having a child.
As they realized their parents were getting older, they decided that they wanted to start a family of their own. Self described “big planners,” they planned every detail before the pregnancy. They baby-proofed their home. They made sure their finances where in order. As soon as they found out they were having a baby boy, they prepared the nursery and picked out a name for their child: Donovan.
But they couldn’t have planned for what came next. At 31 weeks into the pregnancy, their child was stillborn. Complications during delivery sent Allison close to death. As she lay in the Intensive Care Unit at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital, Brian made a phone call to his insurance provider, which told him he could not take paid time off to take care of his wife.
It’s been three years since the loss of their son, but the DeLays have been hard at work keeping his memory alive and trying to ensure no family goes through what they did. The Hamilton residents have put together a charity event for Nov. 8, the kick-off for Donovan Delivers, a charity they founded last year to help families recovering from a stillbirth. The charity’s main focus is taking care of the financial difficulties that may arise, so families can heal physically and emotionally without worrying about the next paycheck.
It’s help the DeLay’s did not have.
When they decided they were ready to have a baby, the pregnancy came easily. All of the routine tests came back negative, and Allison had virtually no pregnancy related sickness or side effects.
In the summer 2012, Allison was 31 weeks pregnant when suddenly she began to have abdominal cramping. It was a Saturday night, and she called her doctor who told her to go to the hospital to get checked out. They arrived around midnight. As is routine, the nurse checked for the baby’s heartbeat to put on a fetal monitor, but she couldn’t find it.
An ultrasound revealed that Donovan no longer had a heartbeat. Without a moment to comprehend that she lost her baby, she was taken into a delivery room to induce labor, where things took an even further turn for the worse.
Allison’s blood pressure skyrocketed, and her vision blurred. Suddenly, she was suffering from severe preeclampsia, a disorder of high blood pressure during pregnancy.
According to the National Institute for Health, the causes for preeclampsia are unknown. The condition develops in women with previously normal blood pressure after 20 weeks of pregnancy or later. It affects the organ and blood systems and can lead to organ failure or stroke. Preeclampsia occurs in 3-5 percent of pregnancies in the United States, and although rare, can be fatal to the mother.
With Allison’s condition deteriorating, the doctors began an emergency caesarean section. During the operation, her blood would not clot, and she was beginning to bleed out. Meanwhile, her organs started to shut down, and Brian was escorted out of the room.
“I just had to leave it in the hands of the doctors,” Brian said. “I came to terms with the fact that we lost him. I felt like I lost one, but I really couldn’t lose both.”
Allison lost so much blood she required a transfusion of 10 bags. Brian was allowed back into the room, but again had to leave when Allison couldn’t breathe, and the nurses called a code blue.
“She was pretty cold,” Brian said. “It almost felt like her life was being pulled out of her.”
As Brian watched new equipment and monitors being rushed through the doors, he kept asking for updates, but the staff couldn’t tell him anything. He sensed something was wrong.
Finally he was allowed into the room, and a group of doctors were encircled around Allison. To Brian’s relief, she was breathing normally again.
“It was the second time he thought he was losing me after he already lost our son,” Allison said.
Allison was able to hold Donovan a couple times, even with the pain of putting pressure on the c-section sutures. After hours on the brink of death, she was transferred to the intensive care unit.
“I was just processing the facts,” Brian said. “There really wasn’t time to grieve because things were happening so fast.”
Visitors can’t stay overnight in the ICU, so Brian stayed with his wife until midnight and set his alarm for 6 a.m. to rush back to the hospital to be with her again. Allison didn’t really know where she was and her blood pressure was still unstable. Her vision hadn’t returned to normal and the doctors were worried she may have suffered a stroke.
On Monday, Brian called his employer to explain their baby was stillborn and Allison was in the ICU, and he was going to need a few weeks off. According to Brian, his employer referred him to his insurance provider. After explaining the situation to one representative, he said he was transferred to another department and he would have to recount the entire ordeal, and on to another, and it went on and on until he reached a case manager. The case manager asked if the baby took a breath, and Brian said no.
That one breath, according to the couple, was the difference between five days bereavement and the 12-week paternity leave his employer entitled him to.
Meanwhile, Allison was having a difficult recovery. She was being taken in and out of her room for a litany of tests. When she was finally able to get out of bed, Brian would help her up and help her walk to the bathroom. Her muscles were weakened from lying in the hospital bed, and she had an excess of fluid in her body from the transfusions.
“The nurses I had were phenomenal, but he was always my favorite nurse,” Allison said of her husband.
After nine days in the hospital, the couple returned home. Brian was still battling with the insurance provider and his employer about paid leave. Before losing Donovan, Brian was expecting his paternity leave. Now, he was just asking for enough time to take care of his wife.
The black and white manner in which the insurance company was treating him was unconscionable, he said. They could have never financially prepared for the grey area they fell into after the stillbirth.
Two days after the couple returned home, they were back at the hospital after Allison began bleeding from her c-section sutures. The blood she received from her transfusion wasn’t absorbing into her body, so it was making it’s way out through her incision. Alarming, but no cause for concern, the couple returned home but her bandages would need to be changed often, and the wound would need to be kept clean.
For the next couple of weeks, she had doctor appointments every day. She was still weak from the hospital stay and her vision had not returned to normal. She needed to be driven to her appointments and she needed Brian to help her with her bandages several times a day.
On top of Allison’s physical needs, the couple was trying to cope with the loss of their son.
“Leaving the hospital empty handed was probably the worse thing,” Allison said.
Every time they turned on the TV, they said there was some reference to pregnancy.
“I don’t know if we were just hyper sensitive, but it seemed like it was happening so often that it just got to us,” Brian said. “We’re thinking about him and that made it a little more difficult.”
Brian’s mom, Sharon DeLay, helped return most of the items from the nursery before Allison returned home. They made arrangements for a funeral, but the arguing with the insurance provider was still ongoing.
Allison said Brian had always been mild mannered and never got upset, but as the issue with insurance continued, he was overcome with anger.
“I needed him to be how he always is, but these people turned him into someone who he wasn’t because they made him reach that tipping point,” she said.
Finally, one of Allison’s co-workers became involved and was able to advocate for Brian. He was able to pursue a paid leave of absence for mental health. It required a lot of jumping through hoops, Brian said, but in the end, he received eight weeks of paid leave.
After going through the loss of a child compounded by the stress of financial instability, Allison began to think of all the other families that go through the same thing. The DeLays had good health insurance, and if this could happen to them, what about the parents of the other 24,000 stillborns each year?
In July 2013, the couple found out they were pregnant with their second child. This pregnancy was different, though. She was considered high-risk and had frequent check ups. The doctors warned her that there was a chance it could happen again.
“Even if you hear there’s a 10 or 15 percent chance of it happening again, that’s high enough,” Brian said. “Not to mention I could lose her this time around, so that was also a consideration. Not just losing the baby, but losing her.”
Allison gave birth to a girl, Avery, at 37 weeks and after a short hospital stay, they brought her home.
“As soon as we got home I felt good, like now I can focus on regular baby issues instead of worry about if the two of them are going to make it,” Brian said.
As the couple settled into life with a newborn baby in the house, they finally had the time to focus on the idea of starting a charity to financially help support a family member to take time off from work to help a mother of a stillborn recover.
With full-time jobs and a baby, Allison and Brian would spend whatever time they could find to work on the charity. After putting Avery to bed, Allison would spend a few hours a night planning and preparing paperwork.
In April, they launched Donovan Delivers with an email to friends and family. Since then, they have been hard at work planning their first event on Nov. 8 at the Hamilton Manor in Hamilton.
The First Annual Sunday Funday Brunch event will include brunch as well as a family holiday portrait by Hamilton-based photographer Heather Palecek. Character actors will be attending the event portraying Batman and Elsa from Disney’s Frozen.
Attendees can also partake in face painting, balloon art, pottery painting and stuffed animal building for an additional fee and all proceeds will benefit Donovan Delivers.
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