MCSD Teacher of the Year says traumatic birth of daughter made her a better teacher

During her acceptance speech when Melanie Gouine became the Muscogee County School District 2018 Teacher of the Year, she told the story of her 1-year-old daughter, Chloe, teaching her a lesson about when it’s OK to break tradition.

Now, the North Columbus Elementary School fourth-grade reading and social studies teacher tells the story about how Chloe’s traumatic birth — and her fight for survival — taught her how to be a better teacher.

Struggle to conceive

After a year and a half of trying to conceive, Melanie and her husband, Steven, learned from an ultrasound that she has PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal disorder that hinders fertility. But with the help of medication, she became pregnant.

“We were so excited,” Melanie, a Grace Christian School and Columbus State University graduate, said in her Phenix City home.

“Both of us were ecstatic,” Steven, a Spencer High School graduate and U.S. Army veteran, said on the phone while working out of town for the B&G Transportation business he owns.

Melanie’s pregnancy went smoothly until her 20-week appointment, when Chloe was measured to be smaller than normal.

“My brother and I were both small when we were born, so we thought that might be it,” Melanie said. “But we decided to monitor it.”

She started having weekly ultrasounds. At the 28^th week, her OB-GYN told her, “Don’t shoot the messenger.” The doctor told Melanie and Steven that Chloe’s numbers weren’t looking good.

“Even at that time,” Melanie recalled, “I didn’t understand the depth of what she was trying to tell me.”

But she quickly understood when the doctor asked, “How long do you think it’ll take you to get to the hospital?”

Melanie responded, “It’s only 28 weeks. We thought we still have plenty of time.”

The doctor was adamant and said, “I want you at the hospital within three or four hours.”

Steven recalled, “My mouth just about dropped to the floor. We were expecting good news.”

Melanie felt numb and scared, but she still didn’t realize she was on the verge of having a baby.

Her mother, Dianna Dravenstott, also was at that appointment, anticipating her first grandbaby. They had planned to go to lunch then shopping for the baby afterward.

“Everything seemed to be going so well,” said Dianna, an English teacher at Hardaway High School. “She had gotten so many good reports. Then, all of a sudden, it just was so shocking.”

Steven put it this way: “Words can’t describe the worry.”

Baby coming

After a day of Melanie being monitored at Midtown Medical Center, with family gathered in the hospital room, the doctor said Chloe wasn’t getting enough oxygen through the placenta and she had to be delivered the next day.

Melanie saw the concern on the face of her father, Jeff Dravenstott, the senior pastor at Midway Baptist Church in Smiths Station, Ala.

“He’s like the patriarch of our family, and to see him emotional, the mood automatically changed for everybody,” she said.

The joy of this yearned-for pregnancy had turned to the fear of a risky delivery.

Doctors listed those risk: Chloe might be stillborn; Chloe might not survive the delivery; Chloe might have reduced brain function; Chloe might be blind; Chloe might be deaf; Chloe might not fully develop; Chloe might have learning disabilities.

The chances of Chloe not making it, Steven said, were predicted at 30-40 percent.

Considering those daunting possibilities, Melanie girded herself and thought, “We’re not going to come out of this completely unscathed.”

The family held hands, and Jeff led them in a prayer. They asked for, Melanie recalled, “God’s will in the situation and that we would be OK and would come out on the other side trusting Him not matter what. He’s going to use this as an opportunity to bring glory to His name.”

In addition to their faith, Melanie and Steven used his 8½ years of Army training to cope with this crisis.

“I was taught and told my soldiers that, no matter what’s in front of you, as long as you take that next step, you can keep going,” said Steven, a former sergeant. “Chloe was alive. She was in trouble, but she was alive, so we could deal with this.”

The next day, because it would be an emergency C-section, only Steven was allowed to accompany Melanie as she was wheeled away. With a choked-up voice, Jeff told Melanie how proud he is of her.

“That was when I just totally broke down,” Melanie said.

“It was horrible,” Dianna said. “As a mother, you want to protect your children all the time. The whole thing was devastating, not being in there with her, especially knowing she was in danger and the baby might not live. I kind of felt robbed of the whole process. I couldn’t be there as her mother and enjoying that moment with her.”

Dianna even thought about what she would say to Melanie if Chloe died that day.

“I just was overwhelmed,” Dianna said.

‘Did you hear that?’

Melanie and Steven were warned they probably wouldn’t hear Chloe cry when she is delivered, even if she was alive, because her lungs were so underdeveloped.

“As soon as they pulled her out, she started screaming,” Melanie recalled.

Steven recollects the sound differently, as “the faintest cry.” Regardless, the significance of what Chloe uttered was clear: “Something was working right,” he said.

Melanie couldn’t see the scene, but Steven looked into her eyes and asked, “Did you hear that?”

And they joined Chloe in a thankful cry.

But the situation still was dire. Chloe immediately was placed in an incubator. No time for mama and baby to have skin-to-skin cuddle time. Melanie could only tell her newborn through the tears, “Bye, baby. Mommy loves you.”

“I just felt like a bad mom in that moment,” she said. “It was supposed to be that time when you can bond with your baby. They talk about how important that time is right after birth, when they put your baby directly on your chest. I had been anticipating that moment, so I was just feeling like I didn’t do enough for her.”

Chloe weighed 1 pound and 13 ounces when she was born July 2, 2016.

“You could have fit her in the palm of your hand,” Melanie said.

“She just looked so frail,” Steven said.

No family member was allowed to hold Chloe until more than a week later. Melanie used an iPad connected to a webcam in the NICU to observe her daughter.

Melanie was released from the hospital two days after delivery. Chloe remained there for two months.

Committed to breastfeeding, Melanie pumped her milk for nurses to feed it to Chloe.

“When she started breast pumping, it wasn’t producing, but she kept at it,” Steven said. “It would be torture sometimes, but she wouldn’t stop. Even just a drop of breast milk was huge for Chloe in her development, so Melanie gave every drop she could.”

Chloe’s mouth was so underdeveloped, the nurses initially fed her the breast milk through a tube and eventually a swab or a syringe. Melanie had to wait two weeks to feed Chloe by herself.

“It took 20 minutes just to get her out of the incubator,” she said. “But they had to monitor her the whole time.”

They also had to keep the nest of wires attached to Chloe, so Melanie was wary of snuggling too closely. Nurses assured her, “You can’t break her. She’s just a bunch of cartilage now.”

Nonetheless, finally holding and feeding her daughter, Melanie said, “I can’t even put into words how that felt. It was incredible.”

In August 2016, while Melanie started the new school year, she had to divide her head and her heart between her school babies in her classroom and her biological baby still in the hospital. She worked all day then stayed in the NICU with Chloe as long as she could, trading shifts with Steven into the wee hours of the morning while the other parent took care of 12-year-old Christian, Steven’s son from his previous marriage, who was too young to visit his stepsister in the hospital.

“The NICU staff, they were the most professional and informative and just caring group of people we could have had,” Steven said. “When we had to leave her, that’s what made it easier.”

Melanie was jealous when she saw other mothers. After seeing a nurse insert an IV into her daughter’s head to keep her alive, she saw her happy and healthy children at school go home with their mothers, and she saw sick children in the hospital recover enough to go home with their mothers.

“I was wishing I was that lucky,” she said.

Chloe’s setbacks tested her faith. One night, Chloe was supposed to have more wires disconnected from her as she was considered strong enough to regulate her body temperature. But when Melanie arrived, a feeding tube and an oxygen mask were back on her daughter.

“I just broke down right there in front of everybody,” she said. “You think you’re getting closer to that day she’s going to come home, and then you walk in there and everything’s attached again and you’re starting all over.”

Steven counseled Melanie with this wisdom: He equated Chloe’s challenge to what Melanie’s students face. “If a kid fails the test, you’re not a horrible teacher,” he told her. “It just means something else needs to be done.”

Prayer comforted them as well. So did Christian music. Driving home from the NICU one night, physically and emotionally exhausted, Melanie heard “Thy Will” by Hillary Scott:

“I may never understand

“That my broken heart is a part of your plan.

“When I try to pray,

“All I’ve got is hurt and these four words:

“Thy will be done.

“Thy will be done.

“Thy will be done.”

The song reminded her, “I’m completely out of control in this moment. … If something bad does happen to Chloe, God will get me through whatever that challenge brings.”

And she gained greater gratitude for the gift of Chloe’s life when she watched distraught parents in the hospital go to a special room to hold their dying child for the last time.

Coming home

Chloe finally came home Sept. 2, 2016.

Melanie exclaimed as she remembered that day, “I could hold her! I didn’t want to let her go at that point. I mean, she slept on me all night.”

The six-week maternity leave Melanie had planned doubled to 12 weeks -- and cost her a paycheck – because Chloe’s rollercoaster recovery progressed and regressed and progressed again.

Chloe weighed 5 pounds when she was released from the hospital, but she alarmingly lost weight.

“We had to strap her up at night and listen to the monitor, and it would make this awful, loud sound whenever she stopped breathing,” Melanie said.

Severe acid reflux hindered Chloe’s breathing even more. She had to be hospitalized after turning purple one day. Steven’s job often kept him away from home, and Melanie struggled with postpartum depression. But family and friends, from school and church, came through with support.

“We’re truly blessed with people all around us,” Melanie said, “just a community of people who helped us in so many ways.”

The tough times strengthened their family, Steven noted.

“That’s when bonds are made and sealed and can’t be broken,” he said. “Humanity is decent. It’s not full of hate. Love really matters.”

And while she was away from teaching the entire fall 2016 semester, Melanie continuously called her long-term substitute for updates on her students.

Greater understanding

Now, Chloe is considered a normal 22-month-old girl.

“She is fully developed, just as she should be,” Melanie said. “.. She can eat anything, do anything. She’s perfect.”

Steven discovered, “To have a daughter in those circumstances, where as soon as she’s conceived you fall in love with her, I didn’t want the vulnerability that a girl would bring out in a man. But now, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Reflecting on their journey, Melanie concluded, “I believe that God is faithful to those that are faithful to Him. I believe our faithfulness through that situation and that we were constantly pointing back to Christ and what He had done for us, He honored our faithfulness by healing Chloe.”

So motherhood and Mother’s Day are even more cherished in Melanie’s family.

“I wanted it so bad,” she said. “You see people who have it so easily but don’t appreciate it.”

Melanie returned to school in January 2017. Her associate pastor’s wife, Liza Lewis, takes care of Chloe while Melanie teaches. Steven marvels at his wife’s dedication culminating in her Teacher of the Year award.

“I’m as proud as a husband could be,” he said. “Nobody sees the work outside the classroom that goes into teaching, the hours she puts in at home, the hours she puts in with parents, the tears she cries for her students. She does it without grumbling, and to see her rewarded for that, it means everything.”

Being a mother has made her a better teacher, Melanie believes.

“It helped me to understand the value of each of those kids in the way their parents see them, and in the way that I now had to take care of them,” she said, “the way that I would want a teacher to take care of Chloe.”

This story was originally published May 13, 2018 at 11:38 AM with the headline "MCSD Teacher of the Year says traumatic birth of daughter made her a better teacher."