Gratitude for a Life Saved

Post Author: Kristen Corr Rod

During the month of November, Fidelia’s Sisters will be exploring the theme of gratitude and what it means to live out of a sense of abundance. Please enjoy these reflections on the goodness of life and ministry and follow our #thanksliving14 media project.

“Why are you so quiet this morning?” my husband asked me as we drove to church one morning with our 19 month-old daughter in the back seat.

“I’m worried about the baby,” I said quietly. “I haven’t felt him move all morning.”

I was 36 weeks pregnant.  At the end of my first trimester I had discovered that my body had developed a rare condition in which my immune system created antibodies against blood types different from my own. At any point during the pregnancy, those antibodies could cross the placenta and start destroying the baby’s red blood cells, causing anemia. The big unknown with this condition was exactly when that would happen. For the rest of the pregnancy, doctors specializing in high-risk pregnancy monitored me constantly, conducting weekly ultrasounds to measure the blood flow through the baby’s brain, which was an indirect way of measuring anemia. One doctor warned me to pay close attention to lack of movement, because that was also a sign of anemia.

My husband was concerned. “You’d better call the hospital.”

I called, and the nurses instructed me to spend the next hour drinking something cold and sugary and poking at my belly to try to encourage the baby to move. We continued on to church, and I sat in the back of the sanctuary drinking a cold root beer and poking my belly. During that hour-long service, I did feel one sluggish movement from the baby, which assured me that the baby was still alive, but also confirmed that something was wrong. Fortunately, my parents-in-law happened to be at that church service, so we were able to send our daughter home with them while my husband and I went to the hospital.

Technicians and nurses hooked me up to monitors, and then gave me an ultrasound. The ultrasound techs called the high-risk pregnancy doctor, who declared, “That baby is sick. He needs a blood transfusion right away. I would guess that he only has half of his red blood cells. We have to do an emergency C-section because he’s too sick to survive labor.”

I got ready for the surgery and was taken to the operating room, where a team from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was waiting. The OB doctors got to work, while my husband sat by my head. After several minutes I asked, “Has the baby come out yet?”

“Oh, yeah, we forgot to tell you,” one doctor replied. “He’s been out for a while, he’s over with the NICU team.”

Our son was very sick.  His little body revealed the stress of his severe anemia, and he was so jaundiced from all the dead red blood cells that his umbilical cord was neon yellow. He had aspirated meconium and the NICU team was suctioning his lungs trying to get him to breathe. Once he was breathing okay, they wheeled him over to where I was, still getting stitched back up, and I saw him for about 10 seconds before they whisked him away to the NICU, with my husband following.

While I was in a recovery room, still loopy from the drugs, the NICU doctor came in and told me that our son needed an exchanged transfusion, in which, bit by bit, they would take out all his blood and replace it with all new blood. This procedure would take over four hours, and I would not be able to see him until after it was over.

At 1:30 in the morning the NICU doctor came into my hospital room and announced, “The procedure is over, you can go see him now.” My husband wheeled me into the section of the NICU reserved for the sickest babies, and we beheld our son.

He was hooked up to all kinds of things, a breathing tube and a feeding tube and an IV and all kinds of sensors. Tubes from the blood transfusion stuck out from his belly button. He was laying on a light-up warmer bed, with six lights shining on him to treat his jaundice and special goggles covering his eyes, making him look like a baby beach bum trying to get a tan.

The doctor explained that my son had made it through the transfusion very well. He still had several things wrong with him, including jaundice, and they didn’t know how long he’d need to be under those lights. We wouldn’t be able to hold him until they were sure that he wouldn’t need another blood transfusion and could take the tubes out of his belly button. His body had been so stressed that its systems hadn’t regulated themselves, so he was also struggling with both hypertension and pulmonary hypertension. I was relieved to learn that now that he’d made it through that exchange transfusion, everything else he had was treatable.

I spent the next few days in the hospital, swimming in various emotions. It had been a very stressful pregnancy, and many nights I had been nearly sleepless with worry. Now I was exhausted, awash in all the pregnancy and birth hormones that were coursing through my body, recovering from the pain of the C-section and still worried about my son. I felt jealous of all the normal pregnancies and births that happen, and I felt guilty that my son wasn’t getting any of the skin-to-skin contact that we’d learned was so important for newborns. I was able to pump milk for the nurses to give him through his feeding tube, and I took some comfort in giving him that gift.

When it was time for me to be discharged, I didn’t want to leave the hospital. It was so difficult, so sad, to leave our son there in the hospital. I fell asleep that night praying for our son, and feeling grumpy and lonely and worried sad.

But in the morning my outlook changed. I suddenly felt gratitude wash over me. All I could think about was all of the things we had to be thankful for. I was incredibly grateful for all the people who had been praying for us. I was thankful for our attentiveness to the baby’s movements, to my parents-in-law and my parents for taking care of our daughter on short notice. I was thankful for the folks at the Labor and Delivery unit who took my situation seriously, including the high-risk obstetrician who came in on her day off to make the call for an emergency C-section, and for the NICU team who gave our boy the immediate care he needed. I was thankful for all the NICU staff, who were taking such good care of our sick baby. And I was moved to tears when I thought about the person who donated the blood for the transfusion that saved our son’s life.

Our son is now a happy, healthy two year-old, and his sister is nearly four. As I watch them play, I thank God for them. I thank God for giving us the strength and courage and support to make it through that stressful time. I thank God for all of the knowledge and expertise of the high-risk OB clinic and the NICU staff. And I thank God for all blood donors. I have been able to donate my red blood cells a few times since my son’s birth, knowing that blood donors may never know what lives their gift might save.