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The Early<br />
Valentine<br />
Leah Mitchener<br />
Jason and Kisha Flanigan<br />
were excited about Valentine’s<br />
Day of 2016 more than they<br />
had been any year previously.<br />
They didn’t have special dinner<br />
reservations, bouquets of<br />
flowers, nor heart-shaped<br />
boxes of chocolates in order.<br />
They had much better plans than that; plans to meet<br />
their newborn son – Karter.<br />
The pregnancy was going well, and the anticipation<br />
and excitement of welcoming a new family member<br />
grew daily for the Flanigans. The chilly days of<br />
November came, and Kisha went in for a routine<br />
doctor’s appointment. Feeling great for being six months<br />
pregnant, Kisha was blindsided by the news she was<br />
about to receive. She was going to have to deliver baby<br />
Karter three months prematurely because she had<br />
developed walking pneumonia and her kidneys were<br />
starting to fail.<br />
When most people think of a baby being born<br />
prematurely, they probably assume that it is due to<br />
something being medically wrong with the child. But,<br />
like Kisha herself found out that day, that is not always<br />
the case. She had absolutely<br />
zero symptoms – no warning<br />
that something could be<br />
wrong. But her blood pressure<br />
had reached dangerous levels.<br />
“On the outside I was fine,<br />
but I was not doing well on<br />
the inside,” explained Kisha.<br />
Karter was rushed into this world through an<br />
emergency cesarean on November 7, 2015 weighing<br />
just 1 lb., 3 oz. He remained in the NICU for three<br />
months until his actual due date so that his lungs<br />
could fully develop, and Jason and Kisha were with<br />
him every day, sometimes multiple times a day, to<br />
watch over him and help him grow.<br />
As an 11th grade English teacher for Madison<br />
County School District, Kisha had participated in<br />
fundraisers and walks for the March of Dimes Foundation<br />
on several occasions because of the support the district<br />
had always lent to the charity. She was always happy to<br />
help and participate, but never expected that she would<br />
later benefit from the work that March of Dimes does<br />
for new mothers and their premature babies. “The<br />
research and the encouragement has really helped me,”<br />
Hometown madison • 17
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