This story is part of our lives and testimony. It really has nothing to do with teaching-- but then again, maybe it has everything to do with teaching.
Dec. 5th, 2018
Eighteen years ago today, our daughter Mary was born. And it was no ordinary birth. Here is the story of what happened in September, October, November, and December of the year 2000.
In the middle of the night, I went into labor. I was only at twenty-one weeks of pregnancy, barely halfway through. I kept thinking that something was wrong, but surely I was not in labor.
The next morning Jeff and I went to the hospital, and they treated me like, "Oh yeah, here's another pregnant lady saying her water broke." But, after three tests, the doctors told me that not only had my water broken, but that all of it was completely gone. They said I'd go into labor within twenty-four hours, and that the baby would only live for about thirty minutes. Then they asked us if we'd like to call our pastor, which we did.
So, I lay there for those long forty-eight hours, but I never even had one contraction. One of the doctors said, "Sometimes it may take a little longer." But after a week, I still hadn't gone into labor.
The doctors and nurses all assured me that this was very rare, and they told me that they were going to just try and see how long they could keep the baby in there. They said if I could make it to twenty-four weeks, the baby might have a chance at life. So there I lay.
Not only did we make it twenty-four weeks, but we made it a lot longer. I lay on my side in a hospital bed for eighty-four days. Every day I prayed for every aspect of her fragile developing body. And every time I coughed, sneezed, or rolled over (which I tried to do only two or three times a day), I lost more amniotic fluid. A pregnant woman's body is constantly replenishing the amniotic fluid, but mine would always just leak out. I remember reading Psalms a lot, and Paul's epistles.
After I'd been in the hospital nine weeks--around week thirty--all the nurses, whom I knew quite well by this point, were getting excited. One of them, whom I'll probably never forget, named Marsha called me "The Time Bomb." She said that she knew I'd eventually go into labor, but no one knew when. Another told me that the first thing she did when she came up to the 9th floor was to see if my name was still on the board. "You're still here," she'd tell me and smile. By this point I had visitors from our church every single day. And one of them brought me some library books. One of these books was an escape story. I felt like I'd like to escape if I could. I've loved true escape stories ever since.
A few highlights of those long weeks were my friend Jolynn bringing me coffee, two of my husband's colleagues from the Grand Rapids Symphony playing lovely violin duets in my room, and a nun playing her harp and singing for me. (Go music therapists!) And then there was the day I got to watch the window washer from my 9th floor view as he came down on his ropes.
By week thirty-two I not only had all the doctors' and nurses' schedules memorized, but also the entire hospital weekly menu. In the late evening on December 4th, it finally happened. I went into labor eighty-two days after the doctors had said I would. God had had other plans. My favorite doctor there, Dr. Mary Ivey, said that because the baby had been squished and deprived of amniotic fluid, that if there was any chance she would live, she would need to be born by cesarean section. Dr. Ivey came on duty at 11:00 that night, and after waiting as long as I could to allow her to make her rounds, I pushed the call button at 11:15.
Mary was born about an hour later weighing four pounds, six ounces. She'd at least put on some weight those long twelve weeks. But there was a major problem they had warned me about. Her lungs. When a baby is in the womb, they "breathe" the amniotic fluid and it "greases up" their lungs to enable them to breathe air. Poor little Mary didn't have any of this, and she had hypoplasia, or hypoplastic lungs. The doctors told me it's like leaving an un-inflated balloon in a hot car for a few days. The plastic melts together and the balloon cannot inflate. Neither could her lungs. The doctors from the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit did everything they could, but she couldn't breathe. They put her on a ventilator and tried to get air inside her little lungs. Once while they tried to inflate her lungs, the forced air popped a hole out the side of her lung and she had to have a drainage tube put in.
About an hour after her birth, her incubator was rolled into my room, and I was able to touch her little hand. She stopped whimpering when she heard my voice. They told me that they were going to send her in an ambulance to the hospital across town which had a level 5 neonatal intensive care unit.
When Mary arrived at this new hospital, the doctor who checked her into the neonatal intensive care was the doctor who had opened the unit and had been there for over twenty-five years. He later told me that at the time he had given her a 1% chance to live. Within two days, she was off the jet ventilator (which gave her up to five hundred tiny little breaths a minute), and within another week she was off all oxygen. The doctors and nurses were all amazed at how well she was doing. I told them we had had a lot of prayers over the past three months. The doctor who had checked her in found me one day and told me he thought she would never make it. "Well, somebody up there heard your prayers," he said. I know He did.
Three weeks later, on Christmas Eve, we brought her home. It had been a long almost four months by that time. My father called her "Miracle Mary." She was delivered by Dr. Mary Ivey, at St. Mary's Hospital, but she is named after Mary in the Bible, the mother of our Lord who still works miracles.
And that's not the end of the story. Mary has three little reminders of all the trauma she went through. The first is amniotic banding - it looks like she has a rubber band around her ankle as something got wrapped around it in utero as it had no water to float in. The second is a scar from where they put the drainage tube when they were trying to inflate her lungs. And the third is the best. Her lungs. The lungs that didn't work; the lungs that couldn't be inflated; the lungs that the expert doctor gave a 1% chance. Her lungs work amazingly well, and she loves to sing. God is so good.
Note: We know these stories don't always have happy endings, and that many times there is a sad ending. We have also lost four children, and so we understand that as well. We're just glad we got to keep this one.
photo by Geneva Martin
Dec. 5th, 2018
Eighteen years ago today, our daughter Mary was born. And it was no ordinary birth. Here is the story of what happened in September, October, November, and December of the year 2000.
In the middle of the night, I went into labor. I was only at twenty-one weeks of pregnancy, barely halfway through. I kept thinking that something was wrong, but surely I was not in labor.
The next morning Jeff and I went to the hospital, and they treated me like, "Oh yeah, here's another pregnant lady saying her water broke." But, after three tests, the doctors told me that not only had my water broken, but that all of it was completely gone. They said I'd go into labor within twenty-four hours, and that the baby would only live for about thirty minutes. Then they asked us if we'd like to call our pastor, which we did.
So, I lay there for those long forty-eight hours, but I never even had one contraction. One of the doctors said, "Sometimes it may take a little longer." But after a week, I still hadn't gone into labor.
The doctors and nurses all assured me that this was very rare, and they told me that they were going to just try and see how long they could keep the baby in there. They said if I could make it to twenty-four weeks, the baby might have a chance at life. So there I lay.
Not only did we make it twenty-four weeks, but we made it a lot longer. I lay on my side in a hospital bed for eighty-four days. Every day I prayed for every aspect of her fragile developing body. And every time I coughed, sneezed, or rolled over (which I tried to do only two or three times a day), I lost more amniotic fluid. A pregnant woman's body is constantly replenishing the amniotic fluid, but mine would always just leak out. I remember reading Psalms a lot, and Paul's epistles.
After I'd been in the hospital nine weeks--around week thirty--all the nurses, whom I knew quite well by this point, were getting excited. One of them, whom I'll probably never forget, named Marsha called me "The Time Bomb." She said that she knew I'd eventually go into labor, but no one knew when. Another told me that the first thing she did when she came up to the 9th floor was to see if my name was still on the board. "You're still here," she'd tell me and smile. By this point I had visitors from our church every single day. And one of them brought me some library books. One of these books was an escape story. I felt like I'd like to escape if I could. I've loved true escape stories ever since.
A few highlights of those long weeks were my friend Jolynn bringing me coffee, two of my husband's colleagues from the Grand Rapids Symphony playing lovely violin duets in my room, and a nun playing her harp and singing for me. (Go music therapists!) And then there was the day I got to watch the window washer from my 9th floor view as he came down on his ropes.
By week thirty-two I not only had all the doctors' and nurses' schedules memorized, but also the entire hospital weekly menu. In the late evening on December 4th, it finally happened. I went into labor eighty-two days after the doctors had said I would. God had had other plans. My favorite doctor there, Dr. Mary Ivey, said that because the baby had been squished and deprived of amniotic fluid, that if there was any chance she would live, she would need to be born by cesarean section. Dr. Ivey came on duty at 11:00 that night, and after waiting as long as I could to allow her to make her rounds, I pushed the call button at 11:15.
Mary was born about an hour later weighing four pounds, six ounces. She'd at least put on some weight those long twelve weeks. But there was a major problem they had warned me about. Her lungs. When a baby is in the womb, they "breathe" the amniotic fluid and it "greases up" their lungs to enable them to breathe air. Poor little Mary didn't have any of this, and she had hypoplasia, or hypoplastic lungs. The doctors told me it's like leaving an un-inflated balloon in a hot car for a few days. The plastic melts together and the balloon cannot inflate. Neither could her lungs. The doctors from the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit did everything they could, but she couldn't breathe. They put her on a ventilator and tried to get air inside her little lungs. Once while they tried to inflate her lungs, the forced air popped a hole out the side of her lung and she had to have a drainage tube put in.
About an hour after her birth, her incubator was rolled into my room, and I was able to touch her little hand. She stopped whimpering when she heard my voice. They told me that they were going to send her in an ambulance to the hospital across town which had a level 5 neonatal intensive care unit.
When Mary arrived at this new hospital, the doctor who checked her into the neonatal intensive care was the doctor who had opened the unit and had been there for over twenty-five years. He later told me that at the time he had given her a 1% chance to live. Within two days, she was off the jet ventilator (which gave her up to five hundred tiny little breaths a minute), and within another week she was off all oxygen. The doctors and nurses were all amazed at how well she was doing. I told them we had had a lot of prayers over the past three months. The doctor who had checked her in found me one day and told me he thought she would never make it. "Well, somebody up there heard your prayers," he said. I know He did.
Three weeks later, on Christmas Eve, we brought her home. It had been a long almost four months by that time. My father called her "Miracle Mary." She was delivered by Dr. Mary Ivey, at St. Mary's Hospital, but she is named after Mary in the Bible, the mother of our Lord who still works miracles.
And that's not the end of the story. Mary has three little reminders of all the trauma she went through. The first is amniotic banding - it looks like she has a rubber band around her ankle as something got wrapped around it in utero as it had no water to float in. The second is a scar from where they put the drainage tube when they were trying to inflate her lungs. And the third is the best. Her lungs. The lungs that didn't work; the lungs that couldn't be inflated; the lungs that the expert doctor gave a 1% chance. Her lungs work amazingly well, and she loves to sing. God is so good.
Note: We know these stories don't always have happy endings, and that many times there is a sad ending. We have also lost four children, and so we understand that as well. We're just glad we got to keep this one.
