A baby girl suffered a fractured skull and brain bleeds after her head was hit in a freak softball accident during the first outing with her family.
The baby remains hospitalized in a pediatric intensive care unit, as her family hopes that she can recover from the damage that the incident dealt to her brain.
Baby Hit By Softball, Suffers Fractured Skull And Brain Bleeds
McKenna Hovenga, a baby girl who was just seven weeks old, was brought along by her mother, Kassy, to watch a softball game where father, Lee, will play. This was the first time that McKenna had gone out, aside from checkups and errands.
Lee was helping Kassy in covering herself with a blanket to breastfeed the baby when tragedy struck. The parents did not notice that a softball flew over the fence, hitting Kassy in the bicep. They did not know that McKenna was hit too until the baby started to scream a few seconds later with a huge lump forming on her head.
McKenna was immediately taken to the Waverly Health Center in Waverly, Iowa. She was then transported by air to St. Mary's Hospital in Minnesota's Mayo Clinic, where she was given anti-seizure medications as they treated her for a skull fracture and two brain bleeds.
McKenna is currently intubated and eats through a feeding tube, as doctors work on stabilizing her seizures caused by the traumatic brain injury.
Here's How You Can Help Baby McKenna
McKenna's parents have created a YouCaring page under the baby's name, which has already raised over $49,000 of its goal of $50,000.
However, in a Facebook post, Kassy wrote "We don't want fame, we want prayers," with Lee thanking people who have supported them through the tragedy.
In the latest update on McKenna's YouCaring page, it was revealed that the baby had a period of 96 hours without a seizure but suffered one in the morning of May 8. Meanwhile, according to CT results on the morning of May 9, all the blood in her brain was gone, but there are two areas of brain damage spotted. McKenna, however, suffered four seizures that morning.
Prayers are indeed what McKenna and the Hovenga family need right now. Hopefully, the baby girl recovers, and no more babies have to go through similar incidents.
Paige Ferguson, a 26-year-old mother, recently started warning parents on the seriousness of head injuries, as her baby boy Colton suffered brain damage after falling off a bed.
