Katie Stevens was 33 weeks pregnant with baby Elaina when she last saw the first responders from Kingsland Station Four, and she wasn’t sure whether she’d be able to hold her daughter.
“After being told all day that everything was OK, I wondered if I was insane. “I thought maybe I just have a low pain tolerance, and this is bothering me more than it would someone else,” Stevens explained.
Stevens had already taken herself to the hospital due to severe stomach pain before getting inside the Camden County Fire Rescue ambulance. She was eventually sent home.
“They said she was not in labor, but when we got to her, she was in even more pain than she was before,” explained Captain Travis Swann with Camden County Fire Rescue
Paramedics rushed Stevens over state lines to UF Health, where she would get treatment for her high-risk pregnancy.
“Once they got there and everything started happening so rapidly, and the doctor said ‘oh my gosh,’ then it clicked in how serious it was,” said Stevens.
She continued: “I had been bleeding into my abdomen for who knows how long. They took a very big blood clot out of me and then I had three blood transfusions.”
Stevens is now thanking you for the call that not only saved her life but also that of her baby.
“We make a lot of life-saving decisions every day, however, it’s very few cases that we get to find out what actually happened and what decisions were the right decisions,” Captain Swann said. “This is one of the lucky cases, not only did everything turn out great and it’s something we feel good about for impacting the family for generations to come, but something we’re actually able to find out what happened.”
Elaina was born early but is now living at home, happy and well, thanks to Camden County Fire Rescue.
