We had a bit of a scare going into it all, but it turned out wonderfully in the end--a marvelous testament to the power of prayer and the grace of God. The pregnancy had all gone very well, and we were at 37 weeks when they decided to do a late-term ultrasound to verify that the baby was in the right position for birth. That was when they noticed something wrong with his heart--one of the ventricles looked bigger than the other one. They sent us to Bangor (the nearest city of any size, about two hours away) for another ultrasound, and that was where the bad news really hit. The doctors thought they saw multiple abnormalities in the heart--we were looking at the possibility of complex congenital heart defects. They thought they saw not only the problem with the ventricles, but also a leaky valve, a narrowing of the aorta, and maybe even an abnormal hole in the septum. On top of this, they thought his stomach wasn't working quite right, and there were so many problems that they wondered whether there might be an underlying chromosomal disorder playing into all of it. We were devastated, of course--it sounded like our son might not make it at all, and if he did, we would be bringing him into a life of tremendous pain--of open-heart surgeries and hospital stays, maybe for months on end.
They sent us immediately down to Portland (the largest city in Maine, about four hours from home), where the baby was monitored overnight. By this time, of course, we had family and friends and church folks praying for our situation. The next morning, the pediatric cardiologist gave us our first glimpse of hope. There was still no way of knowing for sure what was going on, but he guessed that all of the problems in the heart might be related--it looked to him like a part of the baby's heart that is naturally supposed to close after birth was already closing early, and that narrowing was putting undue pressure on the right side of the heart. He wanted us to have the baby delivered right away. So, that afternoon, just three whirlwind, broken-hearted days since we heard the first hints of bad news, we were ready to bring our son into the world. He was delivered by C-section and taken quickly to the newborn intensive care unit. But, wonder of wonders, Samuel's heart problems completely disappeared all on their own. It was exactly as the pediatric cardiologist had suspected--all of the problem areas of the heart had been related to one problem--an early narrowing of a part that wasn't supposed to close until after birth. As soon as he was born, his lungs opened up and the blood was no longer backing up in the right side of his heart. All the other problems, too--the worries about his stomach and some later concerns over his leg--turned out to be nothing in the end. We have a healthy baby boy at home--praise God!
1 comments:
SO glad Sam's a healthy little boy and thankful that you are all home together ... even with functioning on less-than-adequate sleep! :~)
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