Carly Waugh's Web

No limits

New mom won't let spinalcord injury paralyze her life

By KRISTI L. NELSON, Knoxville News, TN
December 12, 2005

Just more than three years ago, after a spinal-cord injury left her paralyzed from the waist down, Carly (Pearson) Waugh prayed for a miracle.

"I just really thought I was going to wake up one morning and be healed," Carly said.

That didn't happen. But on Oct. 27, the day before her 30th birthday, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Samuel Porter Waugh.

Like most new mothers, Carly left the hospital in a wheelchair. Unlike most new mothers, she's still in that wheelchair when she feeds Samuel, plays with him or puts him down for a nap.

It wasn't the miracle she prayed for. It was better.

Carly grew up on a Maryville farm as a tomboy who stood out on her high-school basketball and soccer team. When she graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in forestry, it was no surprise to her mother, Dot Helton, that Carly used her degree to fight forest fires.

Carly "bounced around" the Western United States for six years before signing on with Great Smoky Mountains National Park, only to be sent with other firefighters around the country to fight wildfires in Oregon. A helicopter manager, she was walking along a riverbank in Umpqua National Forest Aug. 17, 2002, and waiting for the smoke to clear enough that the helicopters could fly, when she fell 25 feet, hit a rock and bounced into the river.

"I wasn't performing any act of heroism or anything when I fell," Carly said. "It was a freak thing."

The fall crushed three vertebrae. A neurosurgeon at the hospital in Oregon told her she would never again move below her waist, but added that "he would love for me to prove him wrong," Carly said.

She returned to Knoxville and spent 10 grueling weeks at Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center trying to do just that.

"I had a goal to get back to doing everything I could by myself," Carly said.

She moved back in with her mother and stepfather until she grew more capable of carrying out "activities of daily living" without help, and then a year later moved "a few miles down the road" to her own apartment. She joined a gym and got a lightweight titanium wheelchair and a car, a Honda Element, with hand controls.

"The first time I broke the chair down (to put it in the car), it took me 22 minutes," Carly said. "I remember being highly frustrated with that. Now I can do it in about 30 seconds. Stuff like that, takes time to learn."

Carly, whose engagement to a fellow firefighter ended shortly after her accident, didn't take time to date.

Then in December 2003, she met Steve Waugh, at her stepbrother's wedding. A close family friend, Steve was in the wedding party.

"I knew the rest of her family, but she was always out of town," Steve said. "I was roommates with her stepbrother at the time (her accident) happened. I got really upset - and I hadn't even met her."

When he met her at the wedding, he said, "I actually knew I was going to marry her."

It took him three tries before Carly agreed to a date. Exactly two months later, they were engaged, and in June 2004, they were married. From February to June that year, Carly secretly practiced walking short distances with leg braces so she could walk down the aisle at her wedding - which she did, on the arms of her father, Jim Pearson, and stepfather, Mike Helton.

"I didn't know she was going to walk down the aisle," said Steve, who said the sight moved him to tears.

"I have gotten some movement back in my upper legs, from the knees up," Carly said. "It's not full movement, like you have but there's some muscles to work with. I consider that a blessing."

"I knew I wanted kids all along, but I did worry about the difficulty of having children" after the accident, Carly said. By marrying Steve, she gained a stepson, Corbin, now 7, who spends several days a week with the couple.

"I don't think, when she got married, that it really clicked for me" that Carly might have a baby, her mother said. "They had Corbin, and that was enough for me. She was able to get married, and she had found someone that really cared about her."

The Waugh's decided against using birth control initially, on the chance it might affect Carly's ability to get pregnant later. As it turned out, she got pregnant less than nine months after the wedding - "not a problem," she said, laughing.

She took the same "no problem" approach to pregnancy, researching her options on the Internet and then choosing North Knoxville obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Kristy Newton on the recommendation of friends.

"When she came in, she had everything all laid out, what her needs were," said Newton, who'd never had a paralyzed patient. "After the first time I met her, I didn't have any hesitation" about accepting her as a patient.

Carly's specific needs weren't hard to meet. She had to weigh at home because Newton's office didn't have a wheelchair scale. Because of the metal hardware in Carly's back, Newton had to consult with several specialists before deciding that Carly could have an epidural, and then antibiotics were required to prevent infection.

Newton's biggest concern: "We checked her cervix frequently to make sure she wasn't dilating. We didn't know how much she was going to be able to feel her own contractions."

"Unfortunately," Carly said, laughing, she could feel every contraction.

Carly found statistics that said about half of women with spinal-cord injuries had have vaginal births, rather than Caesareans, and that was her goal. Newton planned a date to induce labor so that all specialists could be on hand, and a wheelchair-accessible room was guaranteed.

"She never seemed like someone who was disabled," Newton said. "She never came across that way."

In fact, late in her pregnancy Carly struggled with giving up some of her hard-fought independence. Her large belly prevented her from working out and doing some of the things to which she had become accustomed.

One day while she was walking her dog, Otis, her wheelchair caught in a crack on the pavement and tipped forward. Carly caught herself with one hand but had to wait for a neighbor to help her get upright.

"It's getting harder to be mobile and do stuff by myself," she said in the last month of her pregnancy.

But that was her only worry. "I've read so much, and I've done so much research, and I feel so confident with Dr. Newton," she said.

Samuel was born on schedule and weighed 6 pounds, 15 ounces. Carly was at the hospital 12 hours before his birth and spent 22 minutes laboring.

"I had an epidural at 5 centimeters," she said. "It lasted two hours, then from 7 centimeters and on, I was learning what it felt like to have a natural childbirth. I consider myself to have a high tolerance for pain but it was pretty bad!"

"He was worth it."

Now home, she's had other challenges: notably, lack of sleep, even with help from her husband and her mother.

"There's nights when I realize I'm so tired I could cry," she said, "and some nights, I do."

But she realizes those are challenges typical for a new mother. Less typical is the challenge she's having with her Honda. She can't reach the back seat to strap Samuel in and out of the car carrier by herself, and she can't put him up front until she takes the Honda to the dealer to have the front passenger-side airbag disabled - and then no one else can ride in that seat.

"If I had it to do over again, I'd probably get a minivan," she said, laughing. "At the time, I was single and so determined to be independent. Now it's challenging, with two kids and the chair."

She has less trouble wheeling Samuel around in his lightweight stroller.

"I used to think it was a big deal to go to the grocery store" in a wheelchair, Carly said. "I'll go and get a whole grocery basket load myself now. It's just all in pushing and being able to maneuver. So if I can push a grocery cart full for a family, then I can push a stroller with a baby in it!"

At home she uses chest harnesses and slings but has also begun using the stroller inside, as Samuel gets bigger and harder to pick up.

"Once he can hold his balance I'll be able to put overalls on him and grab the strap and use my other hand to stabilize myself," Carly said. It's an idea she gleaned from the Internet, as "there's not many women you see around town in my situation toting kids around."

"I believe that it's not so much that you're physically disabled," she said. "It's just that you have to figure out ways to adapt and make yourself able to do it a different way."

She'll soon put Samuel's swing on a platform to make it easier to lift him out, and she's still looking for a new way to bathe him. Right now she sets his tub on the kitchen table and fills it with a pitcher.

"You adapt - and he'll adapt to me," she said.

Corbin doesn't seem to think of the wheelchair as something that limits his stepmother - because, from what he sees, it doesn't.

"People shouldn't let whatever their hindrance is get them down and let them think they can't do something," Carly said. "You just get out, and you try, and if you set your mind to something, you can do it. Just because you might have a disability, or a physical challenge, or even some other kind of ailment, that doesn't mean you can't go out and live your life. You just have one chance at it."

When Samuel was born, "there's no words to explain how I felt," Carly said. "All of a sudden, there's this little being that's yours. It's a blessing, a miracle."