Meet the bridge collapse miracle baby

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (KARE) - Sitting in her suburban St. Paul home, Tina Hickman reflects on the summer while cuddling with her baby boy, Jackson.

"He was a miracle from the time he was conceived," she said.

Every mom believes her bundle of joy is truly a miracle, but in Tina Hickman's case, it is probably an understatement.

"I've waited my whole life to have a baby. I've always wanted to have a baby," Tina said.

Tina and Ben Hickman were expecting their first child together this summer. It had been a rough pregnancy for Tina, but nothing compared to what would come on little Jackson's birth day.

"You're so little you will never have to remember that day," Tina said looking at Jackson.

The day she refers to is August 1, 2007, a day most of us will always remember. Tina is glad she cannot.

"Blessedly, I don't remember a single thing about the day of the accident," she said. "It's difficult for me to hear all of the things everybody else had to go through."

Tina's husband Ben was at a school function with his son, Jarrod when he first starting hearing about the bridge collapse.

"It never really dawned on me that Tina could be on the bridge," Ben said.

Tina was on her way to book club, and found herself on the north end of the bridge when it collapsed.

Sara Miller was also on the bridge. Both Sara and Tina's vehicles plunged 30 feet when the deck gave way.

"It just dropped in the air," Miller said.

Sara crawled out of her car through the sunroof to hear Tina's screams.

"It's when you know someone is in agony," Miller told us. "It's not a sound you ever feel comfortable with. It ripped through me it was like the sound of someone in true agony that needed true attention."

Miller followed the sound to Tina's car where two firefighters were smashing out the front windshield.

"They just took her by her legs on both sides and just pulled her out of the window," Miller said.

Miller noticed Tina's pregnant belly and did her best to try to comfort Tina. Tina was not responding.

"You could see her full abdomen and her belly. She was so far from conscious, there was just no registering," Miller recounts. "I kept saying 'ma'am, please try to slow down your breathing. You have got to keep your body oxygenated for your baby.' And she just, her head was just rolling like a loose bowling ball."

Miller and firefighters loaded Tina onto a body board dragged her up the road to a waiting ambulance. Because of their quick response, Tina arrived at Hennepin County Medical Center a few minutes before 7 p.m. She was just the second bridge collapse victim to come through H.C.M.C.'s doors.

"It was clear she had a significant head injury," said Dr. Steve Sterner, an emergency room physician at HCMC. "She had a decreased level of consciousness and she was not responding very well at all."

The doctors had a tough decision to make and they had to make it fast.

"The first principle in trauma is to treat the mother first, because obviously the baby isn't going to survive if the mother doesn't," said HCMC Trauma Surgeon Jon Krook.

I met with many of the doctors, nurses and other staff members from H.C.M.C. who were working the night of the collapse.

"At six minutes to 7 p.m., and the baby was okay," remembered Dr. Jeanette Thomas. "We were working on intubating her and at 7 p.m., the baby was not okay."

"I pretty much remember you saying, this baby has to come out now," Dr. Krook said to Dr. Thomas.

"Once a baby's heartbeat starts to go down after a trauma like that you don't have a whole lot of time," said Dr. Thomas.

The doctors decided the baby had to come out.

"It was a gamble, " said Dr. Sterner. "It was a good decision. It was a quickly made decision."

"And she was upstairs in the operating room by 7:09 p.m., and the baby was out," remembered Dr. Thomas.

Just one hour after the bridge collapsed, and a mere 15 minutes after arriving at HCMC, a healthy baby boy was born.

"Everything really had to be pretty close to perfect for this to work out, and it was," said Dr. Sterner.

Things may have seemed close to perfect, but not quite. Tina was carrying no identification, no one knew who she was or how to contact her husband.

"So you deliver this great baby and you want to go tell someone, 'hey, you had a baby and the baby is doing great,' but there is no one to tell," said Dr. Thomas.

By now, Ben was growing worried about Tina. He had tried calling her repeatedly, but there was no answer on her cell phone. Eventually, he got in touch with a woman from the book club, who told him never had not arrived.

"So that's when it all began for me," Ben said.

He left the school function and sped home to turn on the television, his anxiety rising.

"Going across the botton of the screen is 'there's one confirmed death', Ben recalls.

Ben watched the grim reports on television. Fearing the worst, he started callin glocal hospitals.

"(they said) that there was a pregnant person that was brought in you know, and maybe if a spouse or someone could come in to identify this person," Ben remembers, while talking to someone at HCMC. "We had no idea it was Tina."

When Ben arrived at HCMC, a hospital chaplain greeted him and he remembers thinking, "this isn't a good sign."

Ben was taken back to the Intensive Care Unit, where he could tell immediately, that the woman being treated, was Tina.

As doctors explained her extensive injuries, Ben noticed something else.

"I looked down at her stomach and did not see the baby, " he said.

Then, one of the staff members told him to turn around.

"And I looked behind me and there were pictures posted up, and I was like, what a relief," Ben said.

That moment of joy however, was overshadowed by the situation at hand. Tina remained in a coma for several days. Doctors were uncertain of her prognosis. She didn't really regain full awareness until late August.

"This is the first time I actually remember holding Jackson and that was on August 29th," Tina recalls. "He'd been alive for 29 days already, gosh that's amazing. That was a great day."

Tina's mother took photographs of mom and baby, every day Tina was unconscious, so that she would have some way of experiencing Jackson's first days.

"I have had times when I sit and think about the feeling cheated about the fact I waited so long to have a baby and worked so hard to have him and asn't able to see him born which, that is a big loss, " Tina said. "I always balance that with the gratefulness and the thankfulness to be where I am now, to be as well as i am now."

Since returning home in mid-September, Tina is taking steps toward a normal life - slowly.

There are appointments with doctors as she continues her recovery from the head injury.

There was a recent visit to Tartan High School where she is an English teacher.

And, she finally made it to that book club meeting, reuniting with old friends.

As Tina shares her story with others, she's been taken aback by the response.

"The way people's faces lighten up and they just start crying," she said. "You don't think I think in life how much you or anybody effect other people"

Little Jackson Hickman's life certainly didn't start out in the usual way, and both Tina and Ben believe, it won't be lived that way, either.

"I think there is a plan for each of us," Tina said. "I think that's one of the reasons we were able to survive that accident is because of the plan that is for our lives and especially for him."