Finn Kimmel’s birth in March 2017 was nothing short of a miracle. His parents, Wade and Kandice, met in 2004 on a blind date. They fell in love quickly and were married a short year later, when they immediately started trying to expand their family. After two years of trying with moderate medical intervention, they tried in vitro fertilization. Two embryos were implanted.

At the first ultrasound appointment, they saw one baby—and Kandice was devastated. “I cried and cried and cried on the way home because I just knew there were two babies,” Kandice said. “Wade was like, ‘You’ve been crying for two years because you couldn’t get pregnant, and now you’re pregnant, and you’re still crying. What are we gonna do?’ I just felt like I’d had a baby that died, which sounds crazy, but I just knew.” A week later, another ultrasound revealed that Kandice was, in fact, pregnant with twins.

*During August of 2017, Finn was all hooked up for an EKG at Children’s Hospital in Little Rock.*

At week 27 of her pregnancy, Kandice’s doctors told her she needed to be airlifted to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital. Wade raced home to pack bags and would meet them in Little Rock. “As I pulled up into the driveway, the helicopter flew right over our house, headed to Little Rock. Kandice and my unborn kids were in that helicopter. It was the most surreal moment of my life,” he said.

After a month at UAMS, via c-section, Cooper Anthony and Olivia Grace entered the world. At eight weeks early, each weighed under five pounds. Cooper was jaundiced and required tube-feeding and oxygenation—a scary situation, but what was to be expected for a two-month-early newborn. Kandice and Wade were allowed to hold him for two hours a day. Olivia, however, was a different story.

*Cooper and Olivia play with baby Finn at their home during the spring of 2017.*

“They came to me and told me that Olivia’s little body and lungs were just working too hard, so they had to put her on a vent,” Kandice remembered. “When we saw her, she was on oxygen, she was tube-fed, she had IVs in her head, she had a vent, she had a brain bleed, and her feet were purple-black because her circulation was so bad. Her skin was almost see-through—that not-ready-to-be-born skin. She was still developing. She was a hot mess, but she was gorgeous to me. It was a week before I could hold her.”

On Christmas Day, Kandice was discharged from the hospital. Since then, Cooper and Olivia have grown steadily into the healthy, thriving teenagers they are today.

In January of 2016, Kandice and Wade decided to try for one more child. They weren’t willing to do in vitro again due to the price. Fertility drugs were presented as a more affordable option, but even so, they were still very costly. The specialist recommended the couple try the drugs for three months. Wade and Kandice decided to try for only one month instead, feeling as if they couldn’t potentially throw away that much money, which “could be a fun vacation, or tuition, or something else that our kids needed, rather than a chance that we might get pregnant again,” Kandice said. “It was too much of a gamble” for them to try for longer than a month.

After a month: no pregnancy. They gave up. “I knew I wasn’t done with babies,” Kandice said. “I figured we would foster one day.” They were at peace with it.

And then, four months later, despite all odds, Kandice found herself looking at a positive pregnancy test.

It was a smooth pregnancy, and on March 21, 2017, at 8:17 a.m., Finn Alexander was born.

*Finn and Kandice at Children’s Hospital in Little Rock in January 2019 when his blood sugar dropped very low.*

Six days later, at his newborn checkup, the pediatrician found Finn’s heartbeat was so fast she couldn’t count it: 254 beats per minute. They thought he was having a heart attack. He and Kandice were airlifted to Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Wade, again, was out-of-town for work, this time in court in Fayetteville. Kandice managed to get a message into the presiding judge, who relayed to Wade that he needed to get to Little Rock immediately. “I drove 100 miles an hour the whole way there and beat [the helicopter] to the hospital,” Wade said.

The doctors at Children’s diagnosed Finn with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, a problem with the electrical wiring of the heart. If the episode Finn experienced at the doctor had gone unnoticed, he likely would have experienced a heart attack. The fact that it had occurred at the pediatrician’s office in his first week of life was nothing short of miraculous. After four days at Children’s, they returned home with medicine and a stethoscope. He would need medicine every six hours and regular monitoring of his heart rate, but the doctors assured Kandice and Wade that he was going to be fine.

*While on a family camping trip to Jasper, Arkansas, Finn enjoyed swimming in the Buffalo River.*

On the final morning of 2018, 21-month-old Finn would not wake up. He was breathing, but he was weak, lethargic, and largely unresponsive. Kandice rushed him to the closest medical office, where medical professionals did all they could to keep a blue-lipped, heavy-eyed Finn conscious while they waited for an ambulance. Both his heart rate and body temperature were extremely low. At the hospital, it was discovered that his glucose level was 12 (the normal range for toddlers is 100 to 180). A doctor from Children’s consulted over the phone, walking a CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System ER doctor through a procedure which involved drilling into Finn’s shin to deliver insulin intraosseously (into bone). Once Finn was stable, an ambulance took them to Little Rock, where, over the course of a few days, he was evaluated by specialists, who concluded that his ketotic hypoglycemia was a rare side effect of his heart medication. “I hadn’t given him his 4 a.m. dose that morning,” Kandice recalled. “I was supposed to, but I didn’t. I wonder, had I given him that dose, if it would have been worse—if he would have died.” The cardiologist ordered that the medicine be stopped immediately; Finn’s heart and blood sugar would have to be monitored carefully until he was old enough for an ablation, a procedure to resolve his WPW.

Since his second near-death experience, almost-5-year-old Finn has been healthy, although he did start taking beta blockers last year after a 24-hour heart monitor test revealed that he was experiencing multiple supraventricular tachycardia episodes, meaning his heart rate would soar. The family is hopeful that the ablation will be performed within the next year. “We haven’t received poor health care anywhere we’ve gone,” said Kandice. “All of the doctors and nurses have been wonderful,” added Wade.

The care they’ve received has allowed them to build a storybook life for their family of five. They consider their main values to be family time, which includes family dinner every night; education in a play-based environment, like St. James; and seeing the world. Wade notes that he and Kandice don’t take “adult-only vacations.” “We want our kids to see and experience things,” he said. And, Kandice added, with kids as fun and wanted and miraculous as theirs, it’s no sacrifice to take them along for the ride.

Feature Stories

Nothing Short of a Miracle