'Miracle Baby' Born to Alabama Couple That Barely Survived Tornado
Twister threw them 30 yards, puncturing wife's placenta and killing her mother.
Oct. 26, 2011— -- As Mitchell Johns helped his wife, Amanda Berry, walk toward the littered vacant lot, both fought back tears.
When they were last there, Berry was five months pregnant, and they were huddled in a corner, kneeling in prayer, asking God to spare them and their unborn child from the tornado tearing through their home in Phil Campbell, Ala.
Today, they're still recovering from serious wounds. Berry can barely walk, and Johns can hardly see out of his left eye or move his right hand.
"I happened to look over my right shoulder, and when I looked back there was a board coming," he said. "I mean, 210-mile-per-hour winds. You can't, I mean you can barely see a glimpse of it. ... But I could tell it was a moving object, and I'm sure it was a board or piece of a house or anything, and it hit my right arm and broke it, and two bones were sticking out of my arm."
When the tornado hit their home, the house exploded. Berry, her mother, Renee Berry, 52, and Johns were thrown 30 yards.
"And the whole entire time I kept, you know, thinking to myself: 'I need to put myself in a fetal position, you know, to at least save my baby,'" Berry said.
In the town of Phil Campbell, 26 people were killed that day. Renee Berry was one of them, dying from injuries she suffered after she was thrown from the house.
"I was trying to hold on to [Mitchell] as much as I could and Mama held on to me, and it took her away," Amanda Berry said, sobbing. "And when she left me, she told me that she loved me. And I didn't get to tell her I loved her, too."
Johns was severely injured and lost consciousness after another flying piece of wood pierced the side of his head. Berry became caught in barbed wire, her right food nearly cut in two.
Even worse, she was losing her unborn baby. Flying debris had punctured her womb, and when help arrived, she was in premature labor.
"I immediately told them I was five months pregnant, and they done an ultrasound and discovered that I had a hole in my placenta where something had punctured me," Berry said. "So they told me that they would have to go in for emergency surgery to see if they could sew it back together before I miscarry."
Johns was sent to a different hospital for treatment while Berry's desperate doctors sat her in a bed and turned her upside down, hoping to keep the baby from entering the world too soon.
After a few long days, Berry said, their "miracle" happened. The hole that threatened the baby's life started healing, and her labor pains went away.
"Going from them telling me that I'm about to lose my baby," she said, "then the next thing you know everything's good, it was, it's miraculous. It was wonderful."
Berry and Johns were reunited in June, and on Sept. 1, a very healthy seven-pound boy was born.
They named him Kaden. Proving the experience hadn't taken away their sense of humor, they have nicknamed him Stormy.
When asked how she felt when people called Kaden a miracle baby, Berry replied, "I just feel wonderful. I mean, he's our hero. No doubt about it."
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