Holly Jay had a hard start to life.  Everyone thought she was a healthy 7.2 pound baby, but that wasn’t true.  “I just couldn’t believe that something like this could happen to my baby,” Holly’s mother Heather explains.  “This is something you hear in stories or see on the news not something that strikes close to home.  That’s what I always thought anyways.”  Everyone’s mind changed the days after she was born.  They just couldn’t believe bad things could happen to a little baby. She had just started life and it wasn’t going well for her.
     When Holly was about twenty-six hours old her troubles began.  “I was sitting up across a noisy hallway from Holly and all I could hear was her breathing.  I paged a nurse and told her that I thought there was something wrong with her but she just wouldn’t listen. She would just keep telling me that there was nothing wrong with her even though there were obvious signs she wasn’t ok.  It was my mother instinct.  I knew my baby girl wasn’t okay.”  When Heather took Holly home she began noticing the problems getting worse.  Holly just couldn’t keep her formula down and her breathing always sounded wet and strained.  “I took her down to Little Rock’s Children’ Hospital the next day.  I just couldn’t wait any longer.  I knew the doctors at Paragould Hospital were wrong from the beginning.”  When Heather arrived at the hospital it was about 9:00 o’clock at night. It was late and she was really tired from the three hour drive.  “As soon as I arrived at the hospital I told the nurse what was wrong.  They took Holly away immediately.  I waited in the waiting room for what seemed like forever.  I was so scared that something bad was going to happen to my baby girl.”
     Heather awoke to find a nurse tapping on her shoulder.  As soon as she was fully awake she ‘attacked’ the nurse with questions about Holly and how she was doing.  The nurse explained that every time Holly drank formula what she didn’t spit back up went down into her lungs.  She also explained that if Heather would have got the any later Holly would have died.  “I was so happy when the nurse showed me into Holly’s room.  She looked like a little angel laying there sleeping.  I couldn’t believe something like this could happen to a little baby like her.”
     That night the doctors drained Holly’s lungs and kept a watchful eye on her.  “It made me so mad that the doctors at Paragould Hospital wouldn’t listen to me.  She could have died from it.”  The next morning some family members showed up to show support.  “We were all shocked at what happened,” Heather’s mother says.  Soon after everyone got settled and some started to leave a nurse walked in and told them that Holly was going to need a feeding tube.  The tube was going to go into her stomach.  “At that moment I got scared but the nurse calmed me down and explained how the tube wasn’t as bad as it sounded.”
     When the tube was placed in her everyone was eager to feed her.  They couldn’t feed her like a normal baby.  They had to remove the cap to the tube (the part that stuck outside her stomach) and hook another tube to it.  That tube was connected to a bag that formula had to be poured into.  They also had to make sure they didn’t feed her too much at one time.  That’s how they fed Holly every day.
     After a few weeks at the hospital Heather got to take Holly home.  Heather says that was one of the happiest moments in her life.  Holly’s mother knew she was going to be a hand full but didn’t expect this much.  Holly had got her feeding tube stuck in between the door and had pulled it out.  Formula spilled out all over the brown carpet.  Nothing from her stomach came out lucky because the tube had a piece that closed immediately after the other tube is taken out.  “Holly was my first child so I had some trouble with her but it was worth it every moment she was home,” Heather explains, but she was always up for the challenge.
     When Holly was around the age of one she got the tube removed.  It left a decent size scar on the upper left part of her stomach.  “It’s not that bad,” says Holly now at the age of fourteen.  “I’m used to the stares and questions about it when people see me in a two-piece bathing suits or changing in the school before P.E. class.  I live a normal life like everyone else.  The scar shows that I’m a very strong person and won’t let go of life.  I even love hearing my own story still to this day.  My scar and my story make me the person I am today.”