NEED TO KNOW
- Tricia Santiago, a Walmart employee from Texas, is thankful that son Emmett has a “fighting spirit” and is home after he spent 153 days in the hospital
- Emmett weighed just 1 lb. when he was born at 22 weeks and 6 days in May
- “We definitely tried to stay hopeful,” she says
A Texas family is looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving with their micropreemie at home after he made his way into the world way far earlier than expected.
“It was definitely a surprise,” mom Tricia Santiago tells PEOPLE. “Definitely had some stomach pain. So we thought, ‘You know, we’ll go to the hospital just in case out of precaution.’ ”
But as they walked into Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Grapevine, Santiago’s water broke.
After being immediately transferred to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, baby Emmett was born at just 22 weeks and six days, on May 6.
Doctors there were able to delay his delivery, giving Emmett several rounds of steroids to strengthen his lungs. He weighed 1 lb. and initially only had a 10% chance of survival.
Santiago, who works as an asset protection investigator at a Walmart location in Bedford, recalls that because Emmett was born so early during her second trimester, doctors told her that she had to make the dramatic decision whether to resuscitate him after delivery or provide him “comfort care” until he died.
Baby Emmett.
Tricia Santiago
“We decided to do the resuscitation — and it took a second try, I know, for them to get the ventilator in, but they were able to, luckily,” she says. Still, Santiago wasn’t able to hold her son until June, she says.
The 35-year-old mom tells PEOPLE that she and her husband, Nel, 47, were admittedly nervous about their son’s prognosis.
“We definitely tried to stay hopeful but also temper our expectations that we knew that his chances weren’t great, but that we were going to do everything we could to give him a chance,” she says.
Luckily, little Emmett had the same “fighting spirit” his parents had embodied to have him.
Santiago met her husband during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the two got married in January 2021. She quickly became a stepmom, but she and Nel were unable to conceive their own child naturally, she says.
Walmart, her employer, had teamed up with fertility and reproductive care company Kindbody and the couple decided to try in vitro fertilization. On Dec. 16, 2024, Santiago underwent her first embryo transfer and found out she was pregnant by Christmas.
Following Emmett’s early birth, he stayed for almost five months at Baylor.
Each day, he grew stronger, moving from a ventilator to a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine to an oxygen tank.
For his mom, those days while he was in the neonatal intensive care unit were often emotionally difficult and physically draining.
“We both worked full-time, so we’d work and then we would go and it would take up to an hour with traffic [to] see him,” she says. “It was hard every day to leave him there.”
By September, Emmett was strong enough to get ready to head home and the hospital was preparing Santiago and her husband for at-home care — including using a feeding tube and an oxygen generator.
After 153 days in the hospital, Emmett “graduated” on Sept. 30.
“It was very exciting,” Santiago says. “Definitely a little scary because he did come home on oxygen support, and we were recommended to get him 24/7 nursing care due to his oxygen needs. But it’s tough to get it covered, just due to how extensive I’m sure it is.”
Tricia Santiago with her husband, Nel (left), and their son, Emmett.
Tricia Santiago
Santiago says she hopes her son qualifies for Medicaid but the federal government shutdown “slowed” them down in being able to apply.
In addition, her husband, who works in advertising, has had to take unpaid leave unDer the Family and Medical Leave Act to help care for Emmett.
However, the family is relishing the achievement of having him home.
“We manifested for months that he would have that chance,” Santiago says.
Emmett remains on the oxygen generator and the feeding tube, and his mom says he “has a lot of other hurdles to work through too.”
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On Nov. 18, Emmett had a procedure to close a hole in his heart at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, and next up is laser eye surgery in December.
He also has chronic lung disease, which Santiago explains is normal for a baby born that early.
But she says she is thankful for all the progress her son has made and that he is home for Thanksgiving — away from all the hospital commotion.
“He’s really wanted to be here on this Earth with us,” she says.