Thomas
Appearances
Call Her Daddy
Alix Earle: Secrets, Sex & Scandals (FBF)
I'm Thomas. I'm Alex's younger brother. I'm six years old. I love Alex because she plays with me. And I really love her a lot. And I appreciate that she plays dinosaurs with me. It's so nice to meet you. I have to hug you.
Call Her Daddy
Alix Earle: Secrets, Sex & Scandals (FBF)
Yeah. After, can I show you around the house?
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
So that's where I went, which I didn't know was kind of where they took the worst case scenarios. I remember being able to touch his hand and walking through this maze that was the hospital that we were in. He's got a bunch of things on him, but he looks fine. Some of the first pictures I have is he's in like an infant stretcher with the glass case over it.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
There's a team of nurses, and there may have been a doctor with us, but I definitely remember nurses that were obviously carrying along things that are monitoring his vitals. And then the main doctor, his name was Dr. Thomas, ironically enough, said to me, he looks like a normal baby boy, but he is not. He has not gone through anything that is normal.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
We're going to be checking him for all sorts of things. And he started listing the most serious things first, things like bleeding in the brain, brain damage due to lack of oxygen. It seemed like the list just kept going on and on. I'll never forget. I think they hooked him up to antibiotics immediately. They hooked him up to a feeding tube.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
He had a CPAP on that was helping him breathe, things like that. I was able to stay with him while they were still doing those things. I was kind of preoccupied with him, just thinking that I would get an update whenever there was something to learn about Kristen's condition. I trusted that Kristen was in the best care.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
The doula was in a waiting area. I was obviously preoccupied with Theo and luckily things were progressing well with him. At this point, things start to slow down. It's a few hours later and I'm talking to Kristen's mom on the phone. Everything happened so quick and it happened in the afternoon that no one had really been able to come up and see us.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
They're just kind of getting updates from over the phone. And I said something to the effect of, Kristen is still in surgery. And Her mom, who happens to be a nurse, was like, what do you mean she's still in surgery? I was like, yeah, you know, just assume that they'll come get me when she's out, that no one's came to get me yet. She's like, Thomas, that is not normal. That is not right.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
This has been three hours. Something is wrong. You need to go find out. That was a big turning point, realizing that not only has my son been put in grave peril, but also my wife. It was actually not long after that, that I did get called down and I did get to meet Dr. Fuller for the first time. I had been in her office and obviously she had taken care of Kristen.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
She was the one that drove Kristen to the hospital and subsequently operated on her as well. But this would be the first time that I would meet Dr. Fuller and it's now probably eight something at night. So it's been over three hours since Theo was born.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
She was very calm and basically just explained that Kristen had not woken up. They believed that she may have had some seizures, but at this point she was still out, which was not normal. So they were transferring her now to neurological ICU to be monitored. I got to actually walk from the OR with her on a stretcher and a team of doctors and nurses around her.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
And we walked through the maze of this big hospital up to a neurological ICU. I remember her hands kind of tremoring a little bit and her eyelids trembling a little bit. I was told that she had been having seizures on and off at this point, three, four hours after Theo was born. I remember them moving her from the stretcher to an actual hospital bed. She was just completely out.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
The doctor had me come over and speak to her. And I took her hand. And I remember Dr. Fuller saying, Kristen, your honey's here. I said, Kristen, I'm here. This is Tommy. I'm here with you. At that point, she did kind of start to open her eyes. And some of the doctors at first were like, she's just having seizure and voluntary action.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
But no, sure enough, that is actually when she started to wake up.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
We went through a pretty rough spell in neurological ICU. Kristen was on a ventilator. She was really emaciated too. They also put her on like a magnesium drip. But I remember it just making her feel awful. I said, okay, Kristen, let's go meet Theo. She was like, I don't know. I don't know if I can do it. I said, Kristen, if you don't do this, you're going to regret it.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
I remember her meeting him and I have photos of when they met and she just looked so beat down. She's normally such a vibrant, bright person. And she has the biggest smile you've ever seen. And that is completely absent in those photos where she met her son for the first time. It's still tough to look at.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
Kristen's recovery process actually took longer than Theo's did. He was able to be cleared from the NICU and was able to be moved into Kristen's room where we were staying and we were all able to kind of stay there together for a few days.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
ROB from the bat was very much, very blunt about her opinion on origins. And aside from that, I don't really remember too many people coming and telling us about origins at that time. But what I do remember is the parade of doctors and nurses that would come by and make time to come to our room and say, hey, I was there when you were brought in and I want to say I'm so happy you're here.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
I remember walking around the hospital to get something to eat This is a major hospital, right? On the floor we were on, all the nurses knew our story. A lot of other people did too. So that really brought out that what we had gone through was not a normal complication or a normal birth by any means. When she started feeling better, Theo was in the same room with us. We were in the hospital.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
That was actually really a joyous time. We were so happy our son was alive. Seeing him sick and emaciated to seeing him become a newborn baby right in front of our eyes. It was kind of bliss those last few days in the hospital. I remember just being so happy. And even though she was in a lot of pain, we were kind of smiling through it.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
They invited her, myself, and obviously our son. And they're like, you can come take pictures in our tub whenever you're ready. And I was like, fuck that. Like, we don't want a bath. I hate to laugh about it, but that stands out. Nobody came to the hospital. Nobody visited her. Nobody sent anything. We started to kind of see their true colors and how much danger we had been in.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
When we got home, it was like the tablecloth being ripped out from under us. We lived in the seventh floor of the loft while we were kind of finishing up our leasing. We did have an elevator, thankfully, but I mean, it was an older building too. It wasn't quiet. We're on the corner of literally Main Street.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
There's people yelling at all times of night and people drag racing in the middle of the night, things that you get in the city. I had used my time away from work, so I had to go back to work shortly after we had gone through this process. She needed to go and stay with her mom because she needed full-time help. For a month or two, we weren't even staying together.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
It was devastating for our relationship at the time. By the time I was able to rejoin them, I felt out of place. I didn't feel like part of the family unit. And I didn't feel like I knew how to take care of my son who had changed so much in his time staying there. I mean, of course, I was going there as much as I could. And I was spending the nights there, probably most nights, but still.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
Yeah, working and then I would drive to go spend the night with moms and come back early to take care of the dogs and go to work. I just remember feeling really, really lost. And I remember even my performance at work really suffering too. I'm just having moments where I'd be working and working and just kind of like look up and just be like, where am I? It was really rough.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
On top of all the new parent woes that the dad's working and then the mom is overwhelmed, we were both coming to terms with what had happened to us and the negligence and the misguided care that we had gotten. As we're discovering that, I mean, where is all that anger going to go? It wasn't something that united me and Kristen. It kind of formed a wedge between us. I think a lot of it was guilt.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
We felt like we had picked this place that was so negligent and was doing all these things. We were the idiots for doing this. We put our son in danger. And I truly think that's how we felt. And that guilt had a way of taking a toll on our marriage and our relationship. Definitely for the first year, I'd say almost two years, we really, at least for me, felt that guilt upon ourselves.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
We still thought that this is just something that happened to us, an isolated deal. It wasn't until much later on that we started to kind of piece these things together. I would say over the course of the next year or so, we started to unravel what had happened to us.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
I'll never forget, I was taking a shower. It was pretty late at night, I'd say around 1 a.m. And I came into the kitchen. We lived in like a loft style apartment in downtown at that time. And Kristen's water had broke. This wasn't completely out of the norm because we're getting closer to the due date. Now we're going to follow the instructions that they gave her.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
We're going to call the hotline and report it. And then we're going to run her a bubble bath and we're going to call our doula and we're going to relax. And so we did all those things and that continued on into the morning. She was starting to feel contractions were increasing. Eventually the doula came and joined us. We're still very happy.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
This is the beginning of this process that we've talked so much about.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
We've gone through therapy and we're in a much better place. If one good thing has come out of us deep diving into what happened to us, it was able to also kind of reunite us in understanding what each other went through. At a certain point, we moved out of that apartment. We rented a house further away from the city. So it was a lot quieter and it was nice.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
But now we live in what most people would probably call the country. And when we did, we found a new pediatrician. My son, I want to say he was a year and a half old. And of course, you know, he's walking, babbling, all that stuff. And the new pediatrician is looking through his chart and he goes, oh, oh my God, you don't see a lot of ones walking around and doing what he's doing.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
And what he was talking about was something called the APGAR score.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
His median APGAR score when he came out was a one. And I think after a few minutes, it progressed to a four. We've received a lot of reassurance, but any medical professionals that look at even just an overview of his records are like, oh my God, you're so lucky to have him and have him in the form that he's in.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
It was like somebody lit a fire under her and she just started diving into reviews on every site that she could find and weeding through the positive ones. Ironically enough, it was all the positive reviews we saw was part of what led us to Origins. They have hundreds of positive reviews.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
As she started to weed through and find these little one stars that were here and there, what we were reading was absolutely horrifying. And it was also very much akin to what we had experienced almost two years before. Kristen was on fire with this.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
As we get there, we're still very relaxed, and so are the people inside of the facility. There were two people there. I remember Jen being kind of the lead, and then there was somebody else. It seemed like nothing was wrong.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
When Kristen said that her contractions at a certain point had stopped completely and weren't making any progression, since they weren't alarmed by that, we weren't alarmed either. Jen was the one that was actually looking over her. She had this like handheld sonogram that was attached to her wrist and hooked up to her smartphone, which I thought was kind of strange.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
And she couldn't figure out how to make it connect and how to make it work. She determined that our son was breached, which we thought there was a chance of.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
I just happen to pull up right as the OB is kind of peeling out of this parking garage and I follow her. And she's not driving like normal. She's taking an illegal turn. She's running a red light. This is very close proximity to the hospital, but it's a big city. So it's not like you can just drive straight over there. And this lady's driving like about out of hell. I'm trying to follow her.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
I remember Kristen calling out that she loved me, but I mean, we couldn't even really see each other. She was a few yards ahead on a stretcher as I'm pulling up in the car. It was very cinematic. It was like watching a movie almost, except for you're in it. This was an OR that was immediate when you got in. I imagine this would be used for car accidents and other high trauma type deals.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
I didn't know this at the time, but Kristen said that when she was wheeled in there, there was probably a dozen people in there. A few of them introduced themselves, but really they just went right to putting her under and right to operating. I had to have a nurse bring me back, but I wasn't able to actually go in there with her.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
What they would let me do is I could stand outside against the wall, and there was a nurse that was peering through a little square window, and she was telling me what was going on. The speed in which this happened, the time that Kristen got there to the time that they actually delivered my son was less than 10 minutes. This was an escalated type of emergency.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
I'm sure they feared the worst based off what the doctor had told them. You're pure fight or flight, numb, head forward kind of thing that people do as a response. After my son was born, it was at 5.37 p.m. and the nurse looked through the window and called in to ask if I could look through the window too. And after it was given the go ahead, I was able to look in.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency
I'm sure they were probably making sure that my son was alive. I saw him on the table and I could see Kristen still completely, for lack of a better word, I could see her insides and her guts right there on the table still. Then they kind of immediately had a team that was going to take my son up to NICU.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E1: Built to Birth
Hi, I'm Thomas. I'm Kristen's husband. We met in 2018. We actually worked together. 2019 is when things kind of switched from coworker to dating and our relationship moved really quickly after that. We moved states a couple of times. We went through the pandemic together in 2020, living together, and then got pregnant in 2021 with our son. We had talked about wanting to have a kid.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E1: Built to Birth
So I was very excited. When she really started diving into natural birth, I really didn't have any clue exactly what that meant. She was very happy to educate me in that. So we started reading things. We started listening to stuff. She started looking into birthing centers. And all this was as foreign as a calculus class would be.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E1: Built to Birth
Once I really started to understand that it was more than just not getting an epidural, I started to kind of maybe be a little bit skeptical. Once I started really diving into the information that she was reading, I saw really just how empowered she felt about doing this and how much she was excited about it. I got on board. I saw that she was taking this seriously.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E1: Built to Birth
We looked through numerous different birth centers online and read their reviews and plans and visits. And then that led us right into Finding Origins.
Something Was Wrong
S23 E1: Built to Birth
How could you do that? Does another woman prey upon someone's desire to take their autonomy and their body back from this patriarchal system that we live in?
The Charlie Kirk Show
Ask Charlie Anything 213: Three Terms? First Hand Campus Tour Experience? Vaccine Exemptions?
Hi, Charlie. I'm from New Jersey. So I'm a 19 year old conservative pop music artist. I want to be able to share my views and build my brand around that. But I find it very hard in a liberal industry with Chapel Roan and Charlie XCX. And I've always been told, oh, you gotta push your music towards the LGBTQ community. which I thought was ridiculous.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Ask Charlie Anything 213: Three Terms? First Hand Campus Tour Experience? Vaccine Exemptions?
So my question is, how can I be a mega conservative pop star when I have everything going against me?
The Charlie Kirk Show
Ask Charlie Anything 207: Saving Idaho? Surgeon General and Smut? Amfest Breakout Sessions?
Hi, Charlie. I was wondering, as an 18-year-old from New Jersey, what I can do to help with the upcoming governor election.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Ask Charlie Anything 207: Saving Idaho? Surgeon General and Smut? Amfest Breakout Sessions?
Yeah, so we have three primary candidates, Cittarelli, Spadia, and some other guy, but I'm for Spadia. So, because Cittarelli said he's non-supporter Trump or whatever.
The Ramsey Show
Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”
How can we help? So my question is, my wife, not recently, but a couple years ago, was diagnosed with cancer and had a hysterectomy. And so we're trying to have a surrogacy to have a biological child. And we're just trying to find out the best, smartest way to get that much cash because it's around...
The Ramsey Show
Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”
it depends on how we do it, but like 80 to a hundred K. Um, and so we have like 40 saved up, but, um, yeah, I just don't know if we should sell our stuff, like our house, like our other house. What do you mean?
The Ramsey Show
Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”
Well, she's, we were both in the military and then I got out and then she piece moved. So now we live in California. So our old house in Arkansas, we, um, just rented it out at the time. Um, what's it worth and what do you owe on it? Uh, we owe like one 70 and Zillow says like two 70.
The Ramsey Show
Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”
Yeah. I mean, we only make like a hundred bucks after cause we don't charge that much rent. Um, man, But the other issue, too, is they're going to kick her out of the military because the cancer has reoccurred now a couple times. So then we're losing—she's primary breadwinner.
The Ramsey Show
Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”
They just medically separate. Like, they look at her and go, well, she can't deploy. She can't do her— She can't do her job. I mean, she could still do her job, but she can't deploy. So they're going to medically separate her, essentially. We'll get to keep the health insurance. That's good.
The Ramsey Show
Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”
Yeah. We don't know exactly how much she'll get VA disability, but they won't give us that rating until kind of the final steps. That's like right before they... do the deed. They pretty much tell her, okay, you're going to get this. But we're estimating, I mean, with cancer, she should get 100%, but you can never be too certain.
The Ramsey Show
Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”
I feel like it's over on Zillow personally, but I mean, I don't know much. You still stand to walk with about $100,000 or $80,000, somewhere in that range?
The Ramsey Show
Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”
That's, like, the big issue is I don't really know because, right, she's definitely going to lose, like, 2,000 to 3,000 a month in income. But once she gets kicked out, we don't have to live where we live because, you know, the military is making us live here.
The Ramsey Show
Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”
Yeah, that sounds about right. Probably another $20,000 to $30,000, somewhere in that range that I would have to supplement to be comfortable living where we're at. I mean, we could deal with – because we already dropped like $3,000 in savings each month right now. So, I mean, we could – You've got more. Theoretic. Which is fine. Yeah, we would be fine, but then we wouldn't be able to be –
The Ramsey Show
Draw a Line in the Sand and Say “I’m Done!”
Because we're already pretty tight with our money. Don't do that.