Miracles

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Anyone who doesn’t believe in miracles has never seen a premature baby.

The tiny perfection. The fight against the odds. The strength and resilience packed into a body so impossibly small. It is, without a doubt, a miracle.

My little miracle baby is turning 36 years old, but I still can’t look at him without seeing that tiny four-pound baby, intubated inside an oxygen bed, IVs in his head, with a look on his face that seemed to say, I’m not going anywhere.

I also believe that some of the worst losses in life can send us down a completely different road, one we never would have chosen, but one that can eventually lead us to something incredibly beautiful.

I had been trying to have a baby for more than two years when I finally became pregnant. I was overjoyed at the thought of adding a third baby to our family, and my two older children, who were three and seven at the time, were just as excited. We began preparing for the new arrival, and the kids even helped me paint the nursery, sponge-painting colorful squares all over the walls. It was filled with anticipation and the promise of a new little person joining our family.

But on Christmas Eve, life had a very different plan for us.

I was standing in the kitchen mixing cookies alongside my friend Melissa when I suddenly felt a warm sensation, as if I had wet my pants. I quickly realized it wasn’t that at all. It was blood, and there was a lot of it.

I was rushed to the ER and admitted to the hospital. They could no longer find the baby’s heartbeat.

And yet, somehow, because it was Christmas Eve, part of my mind was still focused on Christmas morning. I was giving instructions about the kids’ surprises and revealing the hiding places of presents. It seems strange now, but life doesn’t always stop just because your heart does.

Christmas morning arrived with an ultrasound that confirmed what we already feared: the baby I was carrying had died. I was five and a half months pregnant, and I was devastated.

I was allowed to go home to celebrate Christmas, with plans to return a few days later, after the holidays, to deliver the baby.

I came home to my sweet children, who hugged me and mourned with me. But even in the middle of my own heartbreak, I knew I had to show them that life goes on. That we would be okay. And that we would find our way through it.

Two months later, I was pregnant again.

This pregnancy was troubled almost from the beginning. I bled so much that I was at the doctor nearly every week, and even they seemed amazed that I was still carrying a live baby.

But I was.

Then...at 24 weeks, my water broke, or, more accurately, sprung a leak.

I was admitted to the hospital, where I would remain until I delivered. It was July, and my due date was November 1st... could they really keep me that long???

Yikes.

Bed rest was never exactly my strongest skill, and being separated from my two children at home made me feel as though I were on the moon, completely removed from everything familiar, alone and unsure of what the future held. Of course, being 1990 there were no cell phones, no facetime...just solitary isolation. 

I remember my three-year-old son asking me, very innocently, if this baby was going to die too.

And being the realist that I am, I told him that it was possible.

But I also explained that this was why I had to stay in the hospital for so long. I was doing everything I could to give his baby brother the best possible chance of making it safely into the world.

And then, much earlier than anyone wanted, my little miracle arrived.

He was tiny. Way too early, in fact, and not quite ready for the world. His little lungs weren’t fully developed, and he needed help breathing. But with a little help, a lot of time, and perhaps a healthy dose of that determination I swear I could already see in his face, he thrived.

He spent just ten days in the NICU before he was ready to go home.

Home.

To the nursery his big brother and sister had so lovingly decorated for him months earlier.

We all knew we were looking at a miracle every time we looked at him.

And honestly, I think we still do.

Sure, he’s a grown man now, strong, tall, smart and handsome. He has lived 36 years since that tiny beginning, and I’m so proud of the man he has become.

But when I hug him, I’m still hugging that tiny four-pound baby.

The little boy who fought his way into the world against all odds.

The baby who came after one of the greatest losses of my life and became one of its greatest gifts.

And I suspect that no matter how old he gets, he’ll always be my little miracle.

So...Birthday wishes to my miracle baby, and thank you for teaching me that miracles really do exist.

Out of difficulties grow miracles.” ~ Jean de La Bruyère