Mom of 1.4-pound baby, a micro-preemie, celebrates her 'little miracle' this Mother's Day

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Nikki Burdine lost it when the doctor suggested she go to the chapel to pray for her baby.

The baby girl, Andi, had been born three months early, a micro-preemie at only 1.4 pounds. But the baby came off the ventilator after only one day. She started gaining a little bit of weight, giving the parents and doctors hope.

Then the baby got a blood infection a few weeks later. That had Andi fighting for her life again in the neonatal intensive unit of St. Thomas Midtown.

Dazed, Burdine, a Nashville News 2 morning co-anchor, drifted to the chapel, sat down and started bawling hysterically.

“She has to be OK, she has to be OK,” Burdine prayed aloud, her husband, Justin Williams, by her side. “I can’t live without her.”

Nearly a year later, Burdine celebrates her first Mother’s Day with a healthy infant daughter and waves of love and gratitude.

Burdine's happy with the tough decision she made right after the birth — to share on social media her micro-preemie’s birth and fight for life.

“At first, I definitely struggled with that. But she was beautiful and I want to brag about her and I wanted to tell the whole world I had a baby,” said Burdine, 36.

“It was also a way to say we need some time right now, and we need some prayers.”

Burdine and her family got prayers, well wishes and and kind words by the tens of thousands. She says it pulled her family through dark times.

'Reggie White, we're pregnant!'

Burdine and her husband — a college acquaintance she started dating after both graduated from University of Tennessee Knoxville — were in no hurry to have children. Burdine, a journalism student, was focused on landing a network news reporter job.

When Burdine got the morning anchor job at WKRN in 2017, though, she and Williams decided to start a family in Nashville. They had a tough time getting pregnant.

After 18 months — right before the couple was about to start fertility treatments — Burdine saw the result of a home pregnancy test.

She looked at the couple’s beagle mutt, named for a famous UT grad/NFL star, and screamed, “Reggie White, we’re pregnant!”

After telling the dog, she called her husband, who was traveling for work, and told him.

Burdine, like many expecting moms, battled nausea early in her pregnancy. She often rushed to the bathroom during commercial breaks of the morning news. At 12 weeks, doctors told the couple that the fetus was perfectly healthy.

At 20 weeks, doctors said the baby girl was measuring small, in the bottom 5%.

Still, the couple had no worries, though Burdine, while her husband was again traveling for work, went to see a specialist, as her doctor had suggested.

Her husband checked his phone an hour later during a layover in Chicago: “Call me when you can; something’s not right.”

The fetus, in fact, was in the bottom 1% in size, and the specialist said the baby might not survive.

The doctor explained that laws in Tennessee would prevent her from terminating the fetus past a particular time in the pregnancy.

“That’s when I lost it,” Burdine said. “Why would he say those words to me? She’s going to be fine! That really threw me. I was in shock.”

28 weeks: 'It's time for her to come'

The next six weeks were a dizzying series of tests and scary phrases like “bad placenta” and “genetic disorder.” Doctors ultimately settled on something called IUGR: intrauterine growth restriction, a sometimes serious but rarely fatal condition. Sometimes, IUGR babies are born prematurely.

Doctors told the parents to hope the pregnancy would last at least 28 of the usual 40 weeks so the baby’s lungs would be developed.

On the day of Burdine’s 28th week, doctors told her and her husband that Burdine needed to be hospitalized for the duration of her pregnancy. But neither the expectant mother nor father was too worried.

The couple went home to pack a bag and stopped at Chick-fil-A on the way to the hospital, thinking it would be several weeks before they’d see their daughter.

After some tests later that day, the doctor came in the room with an obstetrician, an anesthesiologist and a nurse.

“So it’s time,” the doctor said. “It’s time for her to come.”

Burdine, in the hospital bed with chicken nuggets, burst into tears.

“I couldn’t even talk,” she said. “I couldn’t form sentences.”

Burdine said she was “absolutely hysterical” as she was being wheeled into the operating room, her mother handing her tissues on the way.

“Is she going to be OK? Is she going to be OK? She’s too small, she’s not ready!” Burdine sobbed.

“She’ll be better off on the outside,” doctors replied.

The obstetrician removed baby Andi and handed her immediately to a NICU doctor, with Williams, Burdine’s husband, staring wide eyed.

“She was alarmingly small,” Williams said. “They had her in what looked like a Ziplock bag."

Williams took a quick picture with his cellphone while repeatedly asking doctors whether his daughter was OK.

The answer he got: “She’s very small.”

“It was terrifying, and it’s the happiest moment of your life,” Williams said. “You don’t know how to feel in that moment.”

Doctors offered hope early on, saying her lungs and other organs were in good shape.

Several hours later, Burdine got her first look at her baby. After going past normal-size babies, she stopped outside the big plastic box holding baby Andi, hooked up to a ventilator and tubes.

“I thought, she’s so small," Burdine said. "And she’s perfect and beautiful. There was some fear, but there was no dread.”

Micro preemie: This is the world's smallest surviving baby. She weighed 8.6 ounces at birth

'She’s literally a miracle'

The next day, Burdine stood up long enough to smile and stand next to her husband and pose for the first family photo, with their baby in a box.

Despite her husband’s aversion to social media, Burdine posted that picture to her Instagram page four days later, saying: “On Friday, May 31st at 4:28pm Laura Anderson 'Andi' Williams came into this world. At 28 weeks, she weighs 1.4 lbs. She is tiny but beautiful and we are so in love!”

The post got 3,400 likes and dozens of encouraging comments from other parents of premature babies.

Burdine found comfort in that.

“We’ve got thousands of people praying for our daughter right now. And prayer works,” she said. “It blew my mind.”

The blood infection that came a month later was a scare. But after 10 days or so, Andi recovered. Six weeks later, she was home, where she finally got to meet the four-legged Reggie White.

The challenges have left some emotional scars.

“It feels like post-traumatic stress,” Williams said.

“It was emotionally taxing for all of us, and for me in particular. I’ll be happy to adopt a kid, but I don’t want to go through another pregnancy.”

Burdine said she feels slightly differently, calling Andi’s difficulties “a fluke” and saying she’d be OK with getting pregnant again.

For now, though, all attention is focused on loving baby Andi.

“Every day I look at her, I see this little miracle,” Burdine said. “I look back on my phone of pics of her at 1.4 pounds and she’s changed so much.

“She’s literally a miracle I get to take care of every single day.”

Follow Brad Schmitt on Twitter: @bradschmitt.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Mother's Day: Nashville mom celebrates 'miracle' micro-preemie baby