Born weighing just 2 pounds, 10 ounces, Aurora arrived via emergency C-section at 27 weeks into her mother’s pregnancy. Facing overwhelming medical challenges from the start, the tiny newborn defied the odds and began making rapid progress that surprised even her doctors.
The “Duck Dynasty” family grew by two recently.
On Dec. 28, John Godwin’s daughter Johanna Mata took to her Facebook account to announce the arrival of her twin daughters Cassandra, who goes by Cassy, and Isabella, who goes by Izzy.
At the time, Mata revealed that the two baby girls were still recovering in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
"Both are off cpap, light blankets, and feeding tubes!” she wrote alongside a photo of the girls swaddled up.
“We are working on eating and gaining weight, and monitoring their oxygen and hearts as they learn to do all the things they need to do to come home,” she added in the post.
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Mata’s father, a non-familial “Duck Dynasty” cast member who has worked for Duck Commander since 2002, provided an update on his twin granddaughters during the Jan. 1 episode of “Duck Call Room.”
“They’re here too early,” he said of the babies’ premature birth. “They’re in the best place they could be right now.”
Godwin went on to reveal that his daughter was admitted to the hospital with high blood pressure on Dec. 23 — one week before her expected due date.
Doctors put Mata on a 24-hour watch for preeclampsia and was supposed to return home the following day. But the following morning, she called her parents and notified them that the babies are coming early.
According to the Mayo Clinic, preeclampsia is a pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure and “high levels of protein in urine that indicate kidney damage” or other signs of organ damage.
John Godwin says her daughter had to wait to hold her babies
When Godwin and his wife got the call that their granddaughters were on the way, they packed the car up (using a laundry basket) and headed up to the hospital.
Godwin joked that he wasn’t exactly going the speed limit and got to the hospital nearly 20 minutes quicker than expected.
His granddaughters were born just a few minutes after they arrived.
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“She was pale for a couple days,” he said of his daughter. “She didn’t even get to hold them for a day and a half.”
Godwin said that he and his wife would take pictures of the babies so they could show their daughter while she remained in the hospital room recovering.
He went on to reveal that the babies were expected to come home in a few days, as of the recording of the podcast, and that the babies are off tubes and taking a baby bottle well.
According to Mata, the babies weighed 4lbs. 11oz. and 5 lbs. 6oz. at birth.
While feeding the babies, Mata’s partner, Cecilio, read a book titled, “I Love You Like No Otter” by Rose Rossner — a book with special meaning to Mata, according to Godwin.
“Johanna, she had a stuffed otter when she was (young). I mean, that was her stuffed toy,” he said.
As for Godwin’s grandpa name, he goes by Duck — and his wife goes by Paco.
On Jan. 4, Mata took to Instagram to share that her twin daughters were officially home after what she described as an “emotional rollercoaster.”
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“I never thought this is where we would be. Laying in bed at 1 AM, our girls asleep next to us, and never being happier,” she wrote in the caption.
