Episode Transcript
Nikki Gill (guest):
You feel just this sense of desperation and panic because it’s like, is this all that you can do? I don’t think I’ve ever prayed more in my entire life. Just like out of just pure desperation of just, “I’ll do anything. Just like save my baby,” you know?
Cassie Alvine (announcer):
This is Family Portraits, a new podcast series by Sanford Health.
Alan Helgeson (host):
So what is a family? Google says it’s one or more parents and their children living together as a unit. Another definition is all descendants of a common ancestor. Likely my family is different than your family. We celebrate this. It’s what makes us unique and develops the chapters of our own stories.
In this new series, with each unique story of family, we’ll sew these stories together with a common thread. That thread is one of compassionate care and expertise. And while these stories intersect with the caregivers from all across the many rural communities that Sanford Health serves, the stories belong to the wonderful people that trust us with that care each and every day.
In this episode, our family portrait begins with the story of Nikki and Polly Gill and of all places, on the volleyball court.
Polly Gill (guest):
So Nikki and I met at Dakota Wesleyan and we both played volleyball together, and that’s the first time we met. And then yeah, we were just roommates.
Nikki Gill (guest):
So Polly was like a really big volleyball star in high school. And when I was in high school, my team actually played against hers, and her senior year, she’s from Pierre and they were undefeated all season. And she was a senior and I was a junior. And from our high school in Rapid City at Stevens High School, we ended up beating them in the state championship. So that was like the first encounter and to this day she does not get to live that down. And so yeah, we played volleyball in college together and then like she said, we were roommates and then became more than roommates and fell in love and got married and had a baby. <laugh>
Alan Helgeson (host):
Polly Gill. She keeps track of their time together.
Polly Gill (guest):
I think we dated about seven years before we got married. And then now we’ve been married for, it’s gonna be seven years. It’s been the best 14 years of my life. Yeah.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Yep. Good answer. <Laugh>
Alan Helgeson (host):
When you’re together, at some point the conversation is likely to come up. You know, kids. For Nikki, the answer was easy.
Nikki Gill (guest):
I’ve always known that I wanted to have kids.
Alan Helgeson (host):
For Polly Gill, not so much at first.
Polly Gill (guest):
I actually didn’t want to have kids. When I met Nikki, that’s just something we talked about. I just knew she was gonna be amazing and that’s like all I wanted at the end of the day is a family with her. So that’s kind of when I changed my mind and, that’s what I wanted.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Starting a family is filled with so many challenges, but for Polly and Nikki agreeing on having kids was only the beginning.
Nikki Gill (guest):
I was with boys my whole life before I had fallen in love with Polly. And so I had imagined having babies in the traditional sense. And so when Polly and I fell in love, we had to look at how we wanted our family to work. And initially, I remember having a conversation with Polly at one point saying like, I don’t know how we would … that was like a deal breaker for us at one point.
Polly Gill (guest):
We almost didn’t make it because of that.
Nikki Gill (guest):
I was like “I want to have babies. I want to have a family. I don’t know that this is going to work.” So yeah, I just, I hope that people can listen to this. Or there’s at least somebody out there who can listen to this and think, “Oh gosh, like that’s awesome that I can marry who I want to marry, or love who I want to love and have a family.” Like you can have all of that.
Polly Gill (guest):
Right? And then going into Sanford too, not once did they look at us like we were a same-sex couple. They looked at us like every other couple and didn’t even bat eye at us being same-sex.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Can’t say enough good things about those doctors.
Polly Gill (guest):
Yep. They just acted like we were just a heterosexual couple. And they just made us feel loved and like it wasn’t anything different. And we really appreciated that.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Nikki on how they started on that journey to having a baby.
Nikki Gill (guest):
We wanted both of us to be involved with having our child. So what we actually did with Theo was we had Polly get her eggs ready. So we kind of like split the IVF process together. So Polly had her eggs retrieved for the IVF process and then those eggs were created, like the embryos were created with her eggs and the sperm donor. And then those were put into me. So like, Theo would not have been able to exist without either of us put together, which is like what we were really hoping for in a perfect world.
Alan Helgeson (host):
The Gills found it took a good deal of patience.
Nikki Gill (guest):
I also have PCOS, so I have polycystic ovary syndrome.
Alan Helgeson (host):
And more patience.
Polly Gill (guest):
He has always been the last chance of everything during this whole pregnancy. And the last chance we were going to quit, that’s when we tried something different.
Nikki Gill (guest):
It took about three to four years for the whole process.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Things started turning the corner when the Gills visited with the team at Sanford Fertility and Reproductive Medicine Clinic.
Polly Gill (guest):
We started at Sanford Health because I believe that they’re the only fertility clinic in the whole state of South Dakota. So we’re very, very blessed that they’re nearby. And we couldn’t ask for the better doctors. I think we started off with Dr. Hansen. From the very start we just worked as a team and they said, “We’re going to get you guys through this and we’re going to do everything we can to get you guys pregnant.” And they give us a lot of hope. And they pushed through until we, until we got there.
I was super excited. But how many times we had negative after negative after negative. It was like, “There’s no way we can be pregnant. This is just not going to happen.” And we just didn’t want to celebrate yet. Man, but when we found out, when those were two solid blue lines and the pregnancy (test) said positive, we just bawled. And we just said, you know, we’ve been working on this for four years, trying to have our family and it was the best moment of my life.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Polly is much better at being in the moment and being just really present and really grateful and really happy. And my personality is more like analytical and it’s just like, “OK, what’s the next step? What’s the next step?” So when I saw those positive lines, for me it was like, “We’re not out of the woods yet. We don’t have a baby. I could still have a miscarriage. We’re in the first trimester.” So I wasn’t ever able to really stop, take a breath and enjoy things because in my head it was like very factual, medical, “What do we have to do next?” And also I will say I felt a ton of pressure, like emotional pressure, to be perfect all of the time when I was pregnant. Because it’s like, if I do anything wrong, I’m going to ruin this pregnancy. So like every emotion that comes along with it.
Polly Gill (guest):
Yeah, there’s a lot of pressure on comes with it — women who get pregnant — and I think that’s for every pregnant woman. There’s a lot of pressure onto, it’s like, they feel like it’s your job to make their family. Everything’s on you. You have to do everything perfectly.
Nikki Gill (guest):
And when you’ve never been pregnant before.
Polly Gill (guest):
Yeah, it’s scary.
Nikki Gill (guest):
It’s like, is this normal? Is this not normal?
Polly Gill (guest):
Right. It’s scary.
Alan Helgeson (host):
The Gills found that when it came to starting their family, they experienced a whole new family at Sanford Health.
Nikki Gill (guest):
We have gone through a lot of doctors at Sanford for this whole journey. So we started with our fertility doctors, Dr. Hansen, and let us add their amazing team of PAs. And then as soon as I got pregnant and we graduated from the fertility doctors. Then we went to Dr. Kemper.
Polly Gill (guest):
Oh and man is she, she’s awesome!
Nikki Gill (guest):
So then really after you graduate from the fertility doctors, it’s like a normal pregnancy, right? So then you just have like a normal baby doctor, which is so weird because you have these fertility doctors who are checking you and ultrasounds all the time to going to just like a regular baby doctor.
Polly Gill (guest):
Dr. Kemper would look at the ultrasound and say, “You guys are good.”
Nikki Gill (guest):
Because it was IVF, that’s what labeled us as a high-risk pregnancy. But yeah, we just had like a normal experience from that, at that point. And then at my 20-week scan, we found that my cervix was shortening and funneling, which is a sign of labor.
Alan Helgeson (host):
This really wasn’t part of the plan, right? Nikki’s doctor knew what to do,
Nikki Gill (guest):
So they had to put in a cervical stitch to like stitch up my cervix to stop it from opening in hopes that that could keep the baby in long enough to get to viability. So I remember at that 20-week appointment, they were like, “You could have a baby within the next couple of weeks.” And we were like,”Um, that can’t happen!” So we had Dr. Rodel do my cervical stitch and she is just amazing.
Polly Gill (guest):
She’s amazing too.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Yeah.
Alan Helgeson (host):
While Polly and Nikki hoped that this would help keep the baby in Nikki for a while longer, things didn’t quite work out that way. At 24 weeks and five days, things changed.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Ugh. You think you would be able to like get through it? After telling the story so many times. OK, so the night before the emergency C-section happened, I had felt pressure in my vagina and they came and did a pelvic exam and they said everything looks good. Theo was reading normal on the fetal monitor. There was like, I had the cervical stitch in. So they said if he were dilating at all, there would be blood. Everything looked good. So they had just said like, “No concerns at this point.” So we said, “OK.” So I woke up that next morning and I went to the bathroom and it felt like my vagina was falling out of me. And I had called Polly into the bathroom and I said, “This is not normal.” And something was coming out of me.
And so we called the nurse in and she’s like, “Let’s get you into bed.” And I said, “What is this?” And it was his umbilical cord that was falling out of me. And it was like, they say, when you’re waiting and you’re in bed rest, they talk to you and they say, “I hope that you never have to experience an emergency C-section, but if you do, it’s like a beautiful symphony.” It’s like everybody comes in and they all have their roles and it’s just like a flawless, beautiful symphony and there’s really no other way to describe it.
So they wheeled me out and I had a nurse by my side who I had on Day One, and I just grabbed her hand and I said, “Is he going to live? Is he going to be OK?” And she said, “We’re going to get him out of there. You have to stay calm right now and not give yourself anxiety with everything else that’s happening.” And it was really urgent to get him out of me because with his umbilical cord falling through, that’s cutting off oxygen to him. So we go into the emergency room and they put me on the bed and one person’s at my head and she’s saying, “Do you give consent to be put out?” And I said, “Yes, just save my baby!” And there’s a person like down below, and she’s just like sticking a catheter in and the surgeon comes in. They have to time the procedure perfectly because they’re putting me under general (anesthesia). Like they’re knocking me out completely. Normally with a C-section, they can give you like, an epidural kind of and like numb you.
Polly Gill (guest):
Paralytic. Yeah.
Nikki Gill (guest):
And they couldn’t, they needed to just put me out completely. There was no time. And so they’re like scrubbing my stomach up and the person by my head is saying, “Are you ready for her to be put out?” And the surgeon’s saying, “Nope, not quite ready yet. Not quite ready yet.” And then I have somebody holding my hand and they’re looking for the heartbeat. And I said, “Is there a heartbeat? Is he alive?” And they couldn’t find one. And so they’re getting ready to like put this mask on my face. And I said, “Stop. Is there a heartbeat?” And they said, “Yes, yes, we have a heartbeat.” I said, “OK, put me under.”
Polly Gill (guest):
So when her cord fell out, all the doctors ran in and everybody left. And I was by myself. And I like, had a little moment with God where I dropped to my knees and I just said, you know, I pray that, because she could have had an infection and if the umbilical cord wouldn’t have come out, she could have died and so could have he. I had a rush of peace over my heart, and then from that moment I knew that everything was going to be OK. And then I went and saw him for the first time and it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And he was kicking and he was sassy. And we actually got to have a delayed cord clamping because he was such a fighter. And ever since then, he’s been a fighter.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Baby Theo is born one pound, eight ounces and now begins a new chapter for the Gill family. A 120-day stay at the neonatal intensive care unit at Sanford USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls. And new doctors to care for this growing family.
Nikki Gill (guest):
From our fertility doctors to our OB/GYN to our maternal-fetal medicine doctor, Dr. Rodel, we then had Theo and then we had a new team of doctors, all of our NICU doctors. They’ve got like a rotation, and so we had talked about how every week that doctor was exactly what we needed at that time.
Polly Gill (guest):
They had different ideas.
Nikki Gill (guest):
And they all like bounce ideas off of each other. And every step along the way, it was exactly perfect for what Theo needed.
Polly Gill (guest):
And we can’t even get started on the NICU nurses. I mean, they’re a family.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Just the whole team.
Polly Gill (guest):
We still think about ’em and yeah, they’re just amazing.
Alan Helgeson (host):
During this whole journey to starting a family, the Gills encountered things they never expected in each step along the way. Four months in the NICU took its toll.
Nikki Gill (guest):
He was going to have to go to the NICU regardless. We knew that that was going to happen. We just didn’t know how sick he was going to be when he was in the NICU. His first week, they say that like, the baby is going off of the hormones that I had provided for him when he was inside of me, and it’s like a honeymoon stage. So the first week he was great, and then after my hormones like kind of leave his body and it’s up to his little body to be like, “Whoa, like I gotta do this on my own,” that’s when reality sets in.
The first week was a breeze compared to everything else. And then it got like more complicated. You feel just this sense of desperation and panic because it’s like, “Is this all that you can do?” And I don’t think I’ve ever prayed more in my entire life just like out of just pure desperation of like just, “I’ll do anything.”
Polly Gill (guest):
Just pleading.
Nikki Gill (guest):
It’s just like, “Save my baby,” you know? And they can’t promise you that he’s going to live, right? Like I kept asking the nurses, I would be like, “He’s going to live, right?” And they would say like, “We’ve got really good doctors.” And they would say like, “We’ve got a really good team.” And they would say like, “He’s just doing what preemie babies do.” But nobody could ever tell me like, “Yes, he’s going to live.” Because you can’t promise that to families. And you just so desperately want somebody to just say “He’s going to make it. He’s going to be OK.” But you can’t. So you just have to like, hold onto your faith that everything is going to make it.
Polly Gill (guest):
And just seeing your little guy hooked up to that many things is just the hardest thing to look at.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Those nurses deserve all of the good in the world. They are not only medically taking care of your child, but then they’re like counselors to you.
Polly Gill (guest):
They become like your family.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Yeah. And they’re like therapists.
Polly Gill (guest):
They were like our angels.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Yeah. They wear so many hats throughout the day just to, they’re just phenomenal.
Alan Helgeson (host):
In the months that have passed for Polly and Nikki, some of the challenges they faced were the things that could have had the power to transform or the power to tear them apart. For the Gill family, Polly, Nikki and Baby Theo, it forged a strength like none other.
Polly Gill (guest):
So the hardest part about it in the NICU was the roller coaster that we had to go through. We made progress. You know, two steps forward and then you’d digress five steps back. And so you’d think he was doing good, we’d be OK, we’d be happy, we’d be like, “Yes, he’s got this.” And then we’d get bad news and his lungs weren’t functioning the way we wanted to. He’d make a little more progress and then he’d fall back.
So I think that was the biggest roller coaster of emotions, was really hard to maintain. And I mean, it gets to you. We had a lot of times where Nikki and I broke down thinking he was going to die. So many times. And it is just an emotional roller coaster that I was not ready for. But at the end of the day, it’s made us stronger and a stronger family.
Nikki Gill (guest):
They say the hardest part about being in there is the beginning and then right at the end. Because at the end he looks like a baby, he’s doing so good, but like, you can’t go home yet. And then he’s like big enough where he just wants to be held. And like, when he’s really little, he’s just on a machine and he’s sedated. When he is big enough, he’s crying out and you want to see him, and you want to love him, and you want to hold him, and you can’t take him home. And you’re at work, right? Like you can’t just be in the NICU 24/7.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Where the Gill family has been, they know that others will be too. As a couple that has experienced a journey filled with challenges and opportunities, some words of encouragement.
Polly Gill (guest):
During the whole NICU stay too, we had our neighbor who went through the exact same thing as us. We had that person to talk to, and finding people who understand you was helpful for me anyways. Our neighbor was kind of going through the same thing, and talking to that mom really helped. And so I think finding your community is helpful.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Our NICU neighbor.
Polly Gill (guest):
Our NICU neighbor. Yes. And then talking to her, her child right next to us has gone through the same thing Theo has been. It’s helpful to find your community and also like, things might be really, really dark at the time and really, really tough. But like, things are going to get better. It’s going to get better. It just takes time.
And you might be in the darkest place of your life, but Sanford’s there to help you. The nurses are, the doctors are, your family is, but it does get better. And there were all those moments where we couldn’t hold him because he was in an isolette. We could only put our hands through a hole and touch him. And Nikki goes, “He is sleeping in our bed until he’s in college.” <Laugh>. I’m sure he’d love that.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Theo is a growing boy and the Gill family story is just beginning.
Polly Gill (guest):
He’s just the best boy and he’s so happy and he is laughing and we finally get to see him actually acting like a baby, which we were waiting for for so long. And we just love him so incredibly much.
Nikki Gill (guest):
I would do all of that over a million times if this was like the result of it. It was like so worth it.
Polly Gill (guest):
I agree.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Yeah.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Remember when we began this episode and Polly said they had been together for 14 years.
Polly Gill (guest):
So Nikki and I were still together when marriage wasn’t even legal and we were together when marriage was legalized for same-sex couples.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Nationwide.
Polly Gill (guest):
Nationwide. And so that’s how long we’ve been together and it’s like, we’ve been through all of that. And so knowing that we’ve worked through that together as a couple and then now we can work as a family, as a same-sex couple to get pregnant. It’s something that’s very realistic, even for other couples of same sex. It’s a very realistic opportunity for them and it’s possible.
Alan Helgeson (host):
And for their part, Polly and Nikki are grateful for the medical team who helped them along the way as they begin this new chapter in their life together.
Polly Gill (guest):
They are the story. They are our beginning, our middle, and our end, and our family at the end of the day, even when we’re home. So they are our complete story and they saved his life and they helped us have a baby and her family. They just didn’t do it for their jobs. They truly loved us and loved Theo. Been an awesome journey with Sanford and our family.
Nikki Gill (guest):
Yeah. We’re forever, forever, forever, forever grateful for all of the people who have helped us along the way.
Polly Gill (guest):
And of course couldn’t get through this without God too. So a lot of praying and a lot of good team is what made it made this happen, possible.
Alan Helgeson (host):
Well, we couldn’t really finish this episode without Nikki and Polly telling us the best part of this whole experience.
Polly Gill (guest):
Theo. That’s just it.
Polly Gill (guest):
He is like, he’s just our whole world. So in my happiness with him.
Nikki Gill (guest):
I would say that too. Yeah. I mean, just having him and looking into his eyes and just seeing him smiling at you. A close second though would be watching Polly be a mom. It’s like the most beautiful thing ever from somebody who didn’t even want to have kids, to now seeing her love him is amazing, and it’s like she’s just blossomed into this version of perfection that I’ve never seen before. So watching her be a mom is a very close second.
Polly Gill (guest):
You’re making me cry. <Laugh>.
Learn more
- Explore different types of pregnancy care options
- Preconception planning for high-risk pregnancy
- Midwives are part of pregnancy care spectrum
…
Posted In Gynecology, Inclusion at Sanford, Parenting, Pregnancy, Sioux Falls, Women's
