Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The day Elizabeth Forster was born, she was so small she could have fit in the palm of a human hand.
Doctors doubted she would survive the night.
20 years later, she's preparing to accept her diploma from Bentonville High School. We're going to talk about that on this week's edition of the Know the news podcast.
Hi, everyone. I'm Dave Brozik, managing editor of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and your podcast host this week, Elizabeth. Elizabeth isn't with us in studio. In fact, as we record this, she's in school, but her mother, Pam McDade, is here to tell us all about her daughter's fascinating story.
Thank you so much, Pam, for joining us.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Hi, Dave. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Absolutely. So our assistant features editor, April Wallace, wrote a feature story about Elizabeth that published in Thursday's edition of the Democrat Gazette. And for those of you who missed it, I highly recommend it.
It's appropriate timing, of course, with graduation's ramping up of Benville High school graduates next week, as do many of our area high schools.
And Elizabeth will be among those.
So you're quite proud, I understand.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: I am beaming. Proud. We are so proud of Elizabeth.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: So Elizabeth was born at 22 weeks into your pregnancy?
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: So I guess. Can you start there and tell us what that was like and what the next several months were like for you, for her and your whole family?
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Sure. So it was very unexpected. Elizabeth came 22 weeks and five days, which is actually not even considered a live birth. It's a spontaneous miscarriage. So we always say that Elizabeth came very spontaneously and unexpected, and it was a very scary time, very unknown. I've actually had a baby before Elizabeth, and my pregnancy was great. So to go through a pregnancy and a birth like this, the unknown is it can really take you back. And so after having Elizabeth, I became very sick. I actually had septic shock. And so I really didn't get to see Elizabeth or know what was happening with her for probably about the first week into her after her birth. And I.
Maybe ignorance is bliss at that point, but they did say that she probably wouldn't make it through the night. She had less than a 10% chance of survival. And because I was sick and because I couldn't go into the NICU and see her, they took a Polaroid picture of her and put it next to my bed. And I would just wake up periodically and say, is she still with us? Is she still with us? And that was kind of my first week with Elizabeth after she was born and then after I recovered and had been cleared to go into the NICU.
I don't think I had fully prepared myself for what I was going to see. It was very dark and very quiet. We couldn't talk. We couldn't make a lot of noise because the baby systems just weren't prepared for the outside world yet, so. And I definitely wasn't prepared for how tiny she was. She literally could fit in the palm of my hand. And she was completely wrapped in saran wrap, and that is to shield her from the outside noises, because they want her to think that she's still in the womb and so covered in tubes and, you know, the little stocking hat that they put on your baby when they're first born, that covered her entire face because she was so small. So I really didn't even recognize her as Elizabeth. And just. It was. It was very.
It took a lot to. To walk in and stand over her bed and see her like that. But she was a fighter. I knew. I knew that when she made it through the first night, she was going to survive. She had a strength about her that I think she wanted to live. And she wanted to. To get to where she is today and show us that. The doctors were definitely wrong when they said she wouldn't live through the night. But the next couple months after Elizabeth was born, we stayed in the hospital. We stayed at the Ronald McDonald house.
I would go back and forth seeing her. I was allowed to stay with her as long as I wanted to during the day, and I would just sit beside her bed watching the monitors. I became very familiar with the monitors and what everything meant. And then I spent a lot of time reading and learning what it was going to be like to have a child. Elizabeth asked a lot of questions from the doctors and nurses. I really wanted to be educated on what was happening with her day by day, and what I would need to do as a mom to bring her home.
We had a lot of ups and downs. It was a roller coaster, for sure. It was not always an easy road. We had days that we were told she would not make it. We needed to call our family in and have them travel to Little Rock, say goodbye. But somehow she always pulled through.
It was always a miracle. She's definitely our miracle baby. We experienced a lot of miracles while we were in the NICU with Elizabeth. But it was an experience that I never thought I would have to go through, and I am glad I did. It's really changed me as a person and as a mom. It's really made me want to advocate for other parents who go through things like this and to help bring about change in how we see our kids, like Elizabeth.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: One of the things that stood out to me from the story that April wrote was, and you kind of touched on it, but your optimism going through all this, I mean, you said she was a fighter, so I guess, can you expound on that?
Where did that optimism come from?
How did you. Because looking at a baby that small must have been hard, but somehow you knew she was going to make it.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: So when people tell me it can't be done, I always think, oh, you just don't know me. And I think Elizabeth, I think Elizabeth inherited that from me. I've always been strong. My dad says I was built for war, and I truly believe that. And I believe that Elizabeth also was built for war. And I just.
I'm not a super negative person. I try to see the positive as much as I can, especially with Elizabeth.
I didn't want to be bogged down with thinking, this is the last time I'm going to see her, the last time I'm going to be able to stand by her bed. And I didn't want to think about a life that she wouldn't have. And so it was just always, she's going to pull through. She's going to pull through. I have very encouraging parents.
I have a mom that prays every day, and I know that a lot of my friends and a lot of our family, just their prayers and kind words and support, it helped get through that. So I think I'm just really stubborn, and I'm afraid Elizabeth is, too. And that's probably the bottom line of it.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: And so at what point did you get to take her home?
[00:08:19] Speaker B: She was almost five months old when we finally got to take her home. And so when you have a baby that's as small and as critical as Elizabeth, you have to go through different phases of the NICU. So you start out at the critical care NICU, and then you graduate to just the regular NICU, and then you get to graduate to special care, which is once you get to special care, you know that you're really close to going home. So one of the things for a preemie, though, is that they want them to be able to regulate their own body temperature and to be able to hold their own oxygen, their own stats. So for Elizabeth, that was really hard because she was so little and her lungs just weren't fully developed. So we had to spend a little bit of extra time in the special care, and Elizabeth was on oxygen, and we knew she was going to be on oxygen for a while, and I was really ready to get home. So I just begged the doctors and said, please, I want to be. It was the holidays. I wanted to be home for the holidays. I had another child at home, and I just didn't want to be there anymore. We'd been there for so long, and I needed. And I also felt like Elizabeth would thrive if she were at home, if she were at home with her family and people that loved her and I could really care for her. We had an amazing group of doctors and nurses, but there's nothing like mom taking care of you. So I felt like if I could get her home, she would be okay. So the doctors very reluctantly let us go home on oxygen. But it was a monumental day when they put her in that car seat and said, you guys can go.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: I mean, every baby needs special care, but Elizabeth was a different child.
And you had a six year old already and another one on the way.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. Pregnant with Caroline.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: I can't imagine the level of exhaustion that you were at.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Okay, so if you remember, before, I said I was really stubborn, so that's probably what helped me get through that. But it was as I had said, I'd had a baby, so I knew what being a mom was like. I knew that you had to be up at night. I knew that, you know, there were all these different levels of newborn care that you had to go through. But bringing home Elizabeth, who weighed three pounds when she was brought home, so you have to kind of think about that. You know, when you bring home a full term baby, you're looking at six, seven, eight pounds. And so when you have this tiny three pound baby, they have to be fed very regularly. So we were on an every two hour schedule with Elizabeth. So feeding Elizabeth every 2 hours through the night, through the day, that was a 24 hours period.
Taking care of Nathan, getting him to school, making sure that he was okay, making sure that he had some mom attention, too. And fortunately, I have a very resilient six year old who just kind of went with the flow and who loved his sister so much that he seemed to not be bothered too much, that life was a little crazy in the house sometimes, and so.
But it was. There were days I wondered, are we going to make it through this?
We did. We always did. We always made it through. No matter how difficult the situation presented itself with Elizabeth, we always made it through.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Now, when did you. And how did you decide that Elizabeth was ready for school? And can you kind of.
I don't think we've mentioned the fact that she's quadriplegic.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: She is.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: Right. So. And can you kind of talk about that decision to send her to school and how that came about?
She was two or three.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: She was two. She was two years old. So I wanted Elizabeth to have the same life that all my other children would have. So Nathan was in school. I wanted her to be in school. I knew that any children we had after would. I just wanted Elizabeth to be able to be just as much like her siblings as she could be. And so. And also, I thought it was really important to not only introduce Elizabeth to the community, but introduce the community to Elizabeth, because it is so important that we understand tolerance and acceptance for those who live life a little differently. And I knew that if I just kept Elizabeth home with me her entire life, that no one would benefit from understanding what an amazing child Elizabeth is and what all she could offer our community, even from a quadriplegic standpoint, even from a standpoint of being nonverbal, even from a standpoint, she's also blind. I don't think that was mentioned. She actually went through a surgery later in life and lost her vision during that surgery. So there have been a lot of challenges in getting Elizabeth into an education program. But when we started her, it was the Kids first program, which is part of the Arkansas Medicaid system, and it's specifically designed for parents who want to go back to work but can't put their child in a regular childcare setting. And the best part about it is that Elizabeth could receive all of her therapies while she was there. So she was receiving speech, occupational, and physical therapy. And so that we did that early intervention, and people were coming into the home to do that for us. Again, that takes us back to where I wanted to get her out into the community, and I wanted her to be out involved, so that it was kind of that overall umbrella of everything underneath where you could take her to one school and she could receive everything she needed, including being social and having that social aspect of getting to know other people. And even though so many of those kids had so many diagnoses like her, it's still had her out and had her out in the community. But when she. You can only go to kids first until kindergarten. So then the decision came, do we take her out and take her home, or do I put her in public school? And at that time, her sister Caroline was also starting school. And I thought that we need. We need to put we need to put her in school. And so we explored all of our options with the public school system and what special ed would mean to Elizabeth. Of course, because Elizabeth does have so many challenges, she had to be in a very special classroom. So the six to one ratio classroom was the one that they chose for her, which meant that it was one teacher to six children, and there were paraprofessionals, so a para was assigned to Elizabeth. So that meant that Elizabeth had somebody with her all the time. So I felt very comfortable and very safe, and I knew that if something were to happen, we were just a phone call away.
So putting her. Now, listen, it was hard. It was hard walking away from her, dropping her off, and watching her go into that classroom.
But it was the best decision I've ever made. Because she thrived. She became a social butterfly. People flocked to her, and we always laugh at Caroline because she came home so upset during that first couple weeks of school and said, I'm not going back. And we were like, okay, what happened? And she said, elizabeth is more popular than I am. She cannot walk, she cannot talk, and she has more friends than I do. I cannot go back. And so you kind of have that validation of, I made the right decision to get her into school.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: So she's quite the personality at school.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: She.
I wish more people could see Elizabeth at school. So Elizabeth, even though she's nonverbal, she does say a few words, and one of her favorite words is hi or hey, which is why we always tell people, just say hi. Just say hi to her. She will say hi back.
But if you pass her in the hallway, she will say hi to you. And she doesn't care if she knows you or not or if you know her. And if you do not say hi back to her, she will turn her head and continue to say hi until you do. And so she really wants to make her mark. She wants to be known. And so personality. Yes. That's a great word to describe Elizabeth at school.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: What have you learned from being her mom? What have you taken away from this whole, oh, my gosh, 20 years?
[00:17:27] Speaker B: When you say 20, I think about that. I have been doing this for 20 years. It sounds. It's just. I mean, it's. I don't know, my. I don't know, life any different.
I definitely wouldn't change anything. People ask me that all the time. If you could go back and change this, would you? And the answer is no, because Elizabeth has taught me to be more tolerant and more accepting of people. I think that we live in a society that we are so judgmental so quickly of someone that looks different or sounds different or lives differently. And Elizabeth has taught me so much about seeing past the person.
So many times people just look at Elizabeth and, I mean, teachers and doctors and people on the street, they just look at her and immediately form an opinion or are scared of her or take a step back because they're just not sure how to react to her. Elizabeth has taught me to take a step forward and to get to know the person more than just what you see on the outside.
I think Elizabeth, if people, if more people would take the time to do that and to advocate for kids like Elizabeth or for people who live life a little differently, I think they would begin to see how much they can offer our community and how much they can offer a school or a community group or something that they're involved in. Because I just am so afraid that if I hadn't stood up for Elizabeth and advocated for her, and she taught me to do that, I didn't do that on my own.
She taught me how I needed to be her. She can't speak. I have to be her voice.
She now can't see. I have to be her eyes. She cannot walk. I am her legs, you know, so I have to be the person to say, I need you to give her a chance. And that is really what I had to do in school for 20 years. So many times they would say, Elizabeth isn't smart enough to do this or Elizabeth can't handle that. And I would have to go in there and say, stop. I need you to give her a chance. See what she can do. Don't stop at the fact that she's in a wheelchair or that she can't speak or that she can't walk, because then you are limiting her ability to grow. So that alone has probably been one of the biggest lessons I have learned just to give people a chance, even if they live life so much differently than we do. But it's been an honor. It's an honor to be her mother. It's a privilege and it's a responsibility I have not taken lightly.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Well, let's talk about graduation. We talked about it a little bit before the show, but how's that going to look for her? You said she's not going to take part in the regular graduation that most people go to.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Right. So we're very fortunate that Bentonville offers two different graduations. One's for our general population and one's for our special ed population. And they give us the opportunity to choose. Definitely.
I just know Elizabeth, and I know that her tolerance level of sitting outside for several hours probably wouldn't be in the best interest of everyone attending. So we chose the special ed education, which is a program that will allow Elizabeth to receive her diploma and allow us to be a part of it in the audience and watch her be pushed across the stage. And I'm as proud of her being pushed across the stage and receiving her diploma as I am for all my children who have graduated and walked across the stage.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: So what's next for.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Well, I think we're gonna just take the summer and hang out. I think we're, we've. It's been a lot to get Elizabeth to school. It's. I don't think people really realize, you know, you especially with teenagers, they set their alarm, they throw some clothes on, they get in the car and they go to school. But for Elizabeth, it's very involved. You know, it's, you know, it's like getting a baby ready to leave. And if you have children, you know, especially if you have small children, you know what that entails of trying to get everything. Do I have everything? Did I forget something? So, for Elizabeth, you have to make sure you have her feeding pump, her medications, her seizure meds, lunch is packed, she's in her chair, she's strapped in.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: What time are you up?
[00:22:15] Speaker B: We get up at four. The bus comes at 745. And I will tell you that we're still rushing to get out the door at 745.
So I'm just looking forward to maybe just some downtime with Elizabeth this summer. But we are definitely exploring some different programs in northwest Arkansas to get her involved in. Mainly because of that social butterfly aspect of Elizabeth. She does not want to be home with me all day. She wants to be out. And we're very involved.
We volunteer for the Ronald McDonald house, we feed the parents who have children in the NICU. We go up there and visit and lay food out for them. And we just. I want her to be a part of the community in any aspect that she can. So I think exploring avenues of how she can volunteer and then maybe take part in some day programs around our, around our city would be really good for her.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Well, Pam, it's been wonderful talking to you about Elizabeth, and I wish you and her all best of luck.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. We are so proud of her. Thank you so much. Thanks.
[00:23:28] Speaker C: If you're enjoying this podcast, consider a newspaper subscription to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette or the River Valley Democrat Gazette. We have a special offer for our podcast listeners, so visit nwA online.com nwapodcast to get started. You can also click the subscribe button on our websites, nWA online.com and rivervalleydemocrategazette.com. Or call us at 479-684-5509 and be sure to say that you're a podcast listener. Now back to the show.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Again. You can read April Wallace's story on Elizabeth Forrester, which published Thursday. You can find that on our website at nwA online.com.
Before I go, I want to share a preview of some other stories we have coming your way over the next few days.
Sticking with the graduation theme education reporter Al Gaspine will have a story about the options Northwest Arkansas's high school seniors face once they graduate, including technical education.
Mayors in each of the four largest northwest Arkansas cities will be on the ballot this fall. Stacy Ryburn will bring us that story.
Best Friends pet resource center opened just over a year ago in Benville, Thomas Sicente takes a look at the impact the center made in its first year.
State rules on spreading food processing waste as fertilizer don't give a clear picture of what is being spread, according to the environmental manager for the chief supplier of Northwest Arkansas's drinking water. Both the state and the industry say otherwise. Doug Thompson delves into that topic for us, and Greenwood City Council has a new member. River Valley reporter Sadie LcIcero will introduce us to him.
And there's a man walking across the country, and this week his journey took him through the river valley. Monica Brick got a chance to talk to him Thursday and will tell us about that.
Don't forget all the fun news from our arts and entertainment reporters in this weekend's what's up. You'll find stories from Becca Martin Brown and Monica Hooper about such upcoming events as the White Street Art walk in Eureka Springs, the Freshgrass music festival at the momentary in Bentonville and a forest in the city, a dance performance at the Walton Arts center.
Sports fans, make sure to check us out for all the sports coverage you could ask for, from high school to college to the pros.
All this and more will be available to our subscribers on our tablet and smartphone apps and at our websites nWA online.com and rivervalleydemocraticgazette.com.
Know the news is a weekly podcast brought to you by the newsrooms of the Northwest Arkansas Democratic Gazette and the River Valley Democrat Gazette. Again, Im Dave Perozyk, your podcast host this week. Thank you, as always, for listening. And dont forget to check us out next Friday for the next know the news. Until then, have a great weekend and take care, everybody.
