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The Quibodeax Family

Baby Ezra

Relocated from Relocated from Ragley, LA to Houston, TX (165 miles)

Scroll down to see updates as the Quibodeaux family progresses in their CDH Journey! (All updates are written and given by parents with consent)


Inital Backstory

Hello, we’re the (soon to be) Quibodeaux family! We’re originally from Ragley, Louisiana but relocated to Houston, Texas prior to the birth of our first baby, Ezra. Prior to finally getting pregnant with our son, I was told for years that we didn’t know if I would ever successfully get pregnant/stay pregnant due to issues with my reproductive system like endometriosis, one ovary, severely damaged tubes, low egg count, synthetic hormone allergies, etc.— all before I was even 20 years old. When my fiancé and I met a few years ago, we both expressed that kids were definitely wanted eventually and that was our biggest “dealbreaker”. After a while, we started trying but were unsuccessful. I was told about 6 months to a year prior to my pregnancy with EZ man that my egg count was low and my remaining ovary was in “end of life” mode. After months of struggling and a few miscarriages, we stopped trying. We got engaged in November 2023 and started focusing on buying our first home. In January 2024, we bought our first house! We spent the next few months preparing the land our house was going on and for the first time in a long time, weren’t thinking about me getting pregnant. We moved into the house mid to late April 2024 and found out just 24 hours later that I was pregnant with Ezra Dean! We were supposed to get married in August but decided to wait until our son was here as we both wanted him with us for that day, and just 3 days after our ‘supposed to be’ wedding date, we found out about his CDH. 

Pregnancy was going well aside from being VERY sick until about 26-28 weeks. I had my anatomy scan at 19 weeks 5 days and that’s when I was told our baby had “something really wrong”. Since we are from South West Louisiana, my OB wasn’t comfortable continuing care as he’d never seen this defect in person and immediately sent me to a MFM for further evaluation. A day later, I saw an MFM at home who confirmed our sweet boy had a rare congenital defect that we had never heard of, and that we would need to consider termination or relocating to a different state as no hospital in Louisiana is equipped to deal with CDH or even knows what it is. We were devastated. Going through YEARS of struggling with reproductive issues, getting pregnant and multiple losses, to hearing those words was earth shattering. We both felt like our world stopped spinning for weeks. Neither of us were interested in not doing whatever our boy needed, wherever it needed to be done so the MFM sent us to UT Fetal Center where our CDH journey began. We had 3 days of back to back appointments with so many doctors, I lost count. We learned that Ezra has LCDH and it was expected to be moderate. He didn’t qualify for the FETO surgery, not by a lot, but needed weekly monitoring due to increased amniotic fluid and this being my first successful pregnancy. Every week from around 23/24 weeks until 37, I drove to Houston weekly for ultrasounds and appointments with our doctors. Some weeks, in between my Houston appointments I was driving the opposite direction to my MFM in Louisiana who was about an hour and a half away from our house. LOTS of driving! At 31 weeks and 6 days, I woke up and didn’t feel super great, I thought I was getting sick. Luckily I had a UT appointment that afternoon so I texted my new OB and let her know what was going on, thinking I was beginning to have preeclampsia or was really just sick—to my surprise…I was in labor. I spent 3 days in patient at Hermann and was able to get labor to stop as our boy was nowhere near ready to be earthside yet. At that point he was only measuring around 3 pounds so we HAD to keep him in. They wanted me to move up at that point for even closer monitoring but I’ve been in school this whole time and had finals just 2 weeks later. I was able to finish the semester with A’s and move to Houston after! We were told by my MFM at home and in Texas that Ezra had IURG and that he was much smaller than he should’ve been for his gestational age, even with steroid shots, a changed diet, lots of extra protein and food, etc. 

  On December 19th, at 2:02 AM— 38 weeks and 1 day, our son made his great debut weighing 6 pounds 1 ounce, 21 inches long! Labor and delivery was absolutely terrifying. My water broke at 5 cm and soon after it broke, I felt a jolt and things were feeling “wrong” from that point forward. Ezra never liked ultrasounds or heartbeat monitors and was VERY active, so when he started “falling off the monitor” we weren’t surprised and thought it was just him moving away from it as he commonly did. I was in labor for 12 hours and we didn’t know until his head was out, that something WAS wrong. Prior to birth, Ezra wasn’t expected to need ECMO as he was moderate LCDH, had amazing practice breathing for many weeks before birth, and had increasing levels of everything we were watching with a CDH diagnosis. All I remember from birth was making it to 8 cm unmedicated then being told I stopped progressing and that something was starting to seem wrong—the decels on the monitor were getting way closer together and my contractions weren’t seeming normal for no more progression. I had to get an epidural or end up in an emergency c-section, so I got an epidural. Ezra was out soon after when we discovered the umbilical cord had wrapped TIGHTLY around his neck twice. His dad got to cut the cord, he let out one big cry, then his heart stopped beating and his little lungs stopped pumping, multiple times. Ezra was placed on ECMO at just 1 hour old after that whole time in between was spent trying to get him on the vent. By a week old, Ezra had already undergone 7 surgeries. He was on ECMO for 12 days and finally came off successfully on New Year’s Eve! He finally lost his chest tube and is weaning off the vent right now, doing MUCH better 2 weeks later than he was at birth, and we got to hold him for the first time on 01/03/25!! He still has a long way to go, but our boy is doing it and we are SO proud. We are hopeful that by the end of January we will be able to go home, but until then, I’m with him everyday and his dad comes up every weekend to see us and spend time together, doing whatever we can for/with our son. We are extremely grateful for The Eden Calhoun Charitable Fund as this was not expected early on, we had JUST bought our first home not long before I had to stop working, and between that and all the traveling, air b&b’s, parking garage fees, etc. this has been incredibly difficult financially. Grants like this one are the only reason I’m able to stay with our son everyday so he can have a piece of comfort while he goes through the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, and he’s just a baby. We are incredibly proud of our Ezra Dean ‘baby bean’ and can’t wait to see what he accomplishes in life, he’s already done so much, I know he’s gonna be one special little guy! I will keep y’all updated! 

The Quibodeax Family
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