Saturday, August 7, 2010

Happy Birthday to Son #5

Happy 10th Birthday to Son #5

Was it only just 10 years ago that I gave birth to this "little" guy--our miracle boy???...

Late in my pregnancy, during a routine ultrasound, we discovered that our baby was missing the left side of his heart. They call it Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. We were given three choices... 1. Wait for a heart transplant (could be a very long time--most children die before receiving one) 2. Do a three stage surgery to repair the heart 3. Let "nature" take it's course and allow the child to live a short while until he died (usually only a few days). Well we decided that the three stage surgery was what we wanted to do and moved to Michigan for a little over a month to deliver there at the University of Michigan where a Dr. Bove would do the the first stage of surgery right after birth. Dr. Bove has a remarkably high success rate in these surgeries.

Shortly before we left for Michigan we had another ultrasound done. Strangely things looked a little better with his heart though we were assured that absolutely no improvement could be made since it was so late in his development. The doctors just didn't figure in all of the prayers that were being said on his behalf.

Before my due date we had another ultrasound. Even more strangely his heart looked nearly normal and they said that he may not even need surgery!! From that point on I KNEW that he had been healed by our gracious Lord and he would not need any surgery on his heart.

After birth he was lifted up for us to see and whisked away. We didn't see him for hours and hours after that. Finally they returned him to us in the NICU and told us that they had searched and searched but couldn't find anything wrong with his heart. Praise God!!!

Even so, he did have to stay in the NICU for several days because he had pretty severe jaundice due to ABO Incompatibility. He has his Daddy's blood type instead of mine (we've only ever had this happen one other time--Daughter #1). Had he not been in the hospital, since we normally have our babies in a birthing center or at home, things might have not turned out so well for him. But everything turned out just as it was meant to.

And here we are today with this awesome little boy in our lives that I couldn't imagine living without!! God has been so good to us!! Sometimes we are shown the science and facts so that God can totally blow it all away!!


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