It's a struggle
Matt Way helps his wife, Tara, to her feet after doing physical therapy at Way’s sister’s home near Sweeny. Tara suffered a stroke while six months pregnant and was partially paralyzed on her right side.

Young couple struggles with horrific ordeal

Yvonne Mintz is man- aging editor of The Facts. Contact her at (979) 237-0144 or yvonne.mintz@the facts.com.

Every young woman who hopes to become a mother dreams of the moment the delivery room nurse places the wriggling, screaming baby — her child — on her chest for that first look at this stranger she already knows more intimately than any other being on Earth. Nobody dreams motherhood will start out the way it did for Tara Way. Tara got her moment, but it wasn’t the smiling-through-exhaustion, choking-up-with-emotion-too-huge-to-even-dream-about moment I got. That one, the one most women experience, is the time in our lives when the highest levels of curiosity (What does the baby look like?), sheer joy (She’s here! She’s gorgeous!) and unmitigated love all converge in one second. Tara, a 24-year-old first-time mother from Sweeny, got none of that. Instead, the young, previously healthy woman was under general anesthesia for her first moments of motherhood, having just gone through brain surgery and with baby Myla having just entered the world by emergency Cesarean. The baby was too tiny, her mother too sick, for any unmitigated anything. Instead, there were tears, fears, panic and a whole lot of prayer. A stroke robbed Tara Way of the positive start to motherhood she deserved and caused her daughter to be born three months too early. But Myla and her mom are fighters, and though they missed those first, breathtaking moments of bonding, they have made up ground fast. In a five-part series starting today, Facts reporter John Lowman and Chief Photographer Dan Dalstra let you be a part of their touching journey. Today, they provide an overview of the Way family’s struggle so far. Monday you’ll follow Matt and Tara Way’s love story from an English class at Brazosport College to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston emergency room. On Tuesday, you’ll meet Myla, who nurses call the miracle baby — a tiny girl who has come so far in one month of life. You’ll see Tara grimace in pain trying to move her right leg in therapy and struggle to remember a simple word on Wednesday, and on Thursday, you’ll find out where the young family goes from here — and how you can help. It’s a story that will tug at your heart and bring tears to your eyes, and we’ll tell it in words and pictures, and for the first time, in their own voices. At thefacts.com, on a page designed to showcase the entire series, we’ll load audio slideshows where you’ll hear Matt and Tara sing to their baby girl, hear Tara work hard in therapy and listen to Matt describe the whole ordeal. All the while you’ll see photos, some of which you won’t find in our print product. The first audio slideshow is up on the Web site today, and the second will be paired with Tuesday’s story. Everyone involved with this story worked hard to do the Way family’s story justice, but it is the family who deserves praise. Our thanks to them for letting our photographer and reporter crash their visits with Myla and their therapy sessions. Because they did, I think you will see that though Matt and Tara’s start at parenthood was not what anyone would hope for, if life is what you make of it, theirs will be something amazing to behold.