“The Lord was working out for us obviously because she’s still here today,” Paula Norris Welch tells PEOPLE about her daughter Kayla, now 20
NEED TO KNOW
- Kayla Welch was born 14 weeks early on May 20, 2005, in Louisiana and experienced health issues including a hole in her heart. Three months later, Hurricane Katrina hit.
- For two weeks during the chaos of the hurricane, both Kayla and her parents were separated from each other as she was being cared for at a Baton Rouge hospital
- “I tell everybody, “This kid here, she is a miracle baby,” mom Paula Norris Welch says of Kayla, who is now a college student
Today, Kayla Welch is a healthy 20-year-old woman with a bright future ahead of her, including a college degree that’s just months away. But twenty years ago, she came into the world as a premature baby with a hole in her heart — and she was still in the hospital when Hurricane Katrina hit.
“I tell everybody, ‘This kid here, she is a miracle baby,” Paula, 46, of Minden, La., tells PEOPLE. “Hands down, 100% a miracle baby.
Kayla — whose survival story first appeared in the Dec. 26, 2005 issue ofPEOPLE —was born 14 weeks early on May 30, 2005, at a hospital in Shreveport, La…