Isaac, Part 1

Nineteen years ago, my son, Isaac, was born on December 7. His name means laughter, but the day he was born was everything except laughter. Usually, when a baby is born, you can’t stop smiling and staring at the new life just brought into the world. But that wasn’t the case on this December day so many years ago. To tell you the story of this forever-etched-in-my-heart kind of day, I must start at the beginning before Isaac ever was conceived.

A couple of years into our marriage, my husband and I found ourselves struggling in our relationship. We’d gotten past the honeymoon stage and had some issues that we needed to address. Thankfully, though it wasn’t easy, we stayed committed to one another as we worked through them. After an argument one late October night, I sat on the couch contemplating my life. I had just turned 24 years old. My life was not what I had expected it to be. So many hard things had happened that I hadn’t anticipated or planned. It all felt overwhelming and as if I could never catch my breath before the next hard thing.

As I sat in the darkened silence alone with my thoughts, I suddenly heard a voice tell me that I was going to have a son. And while I can’t say with certainty that I heard God’s audible voice, that voice was so clear and so authoritative that I knew it was God speaking to me. I rushed into the bedroom and told Frank what I had heard. It left me feeling scared, excited, and perplexed. It was such strange timing because I wasn’t sure if we were ready to add a fourth child to our family of five just yet due to the struggles we were going through.

The following May, I found out I was pregnant. We weren’t trying to have a baby, but we weren’t doing anything to prevent pregnancy either, leaving it in God’s hands. When the pregnancy test came up positive, I remembered what God had told me and knew that a son was growing inside me. Frank and I were ecstatic. While we continued to work through our issues, we knew this baby would draw us closer together, especially since we found out very close to our third anniversary.

From the beginning, my pregnancy felt normal, though I did find it strange that my cravings went from Slurpees to mushrooms sautéed in butter and garlic (yuck, mushrooms!). Also, I despised things like chocolate and carbonated drinks, things my non-pregnant self usually enjoyed. However, nothing seemed too out of the ordinary until the day of my mid-pregnancy ultrasound. And that’s the day when the story of Isaac really began.

Frank came with me to my mid-August appointment, just as any doting father does. We walked into the room together excitedly, wondering if we were going to get confirmation of our little Isaac growing inside of me or if it was going to be our Elizabeth. But that excitement came to a standstill as the ultrasound technician took measurements of the baby. I could sense something was off because she was quiet and seemed to take more time than usual. When she abruptly left the room and came back several minutes later telling us that the doctor wanted to speak to us, we knew something was wrong.

After what seemed like forever wondering what was wrong with my baby, my OB came into the room and told us that there might be something wrong with the baby’s heart. Because of it, the baby was not developing as he should be. Though she was a high-risk doctor, she could not diagnose what was wrong with our baby. She referred us to have a more extensive ultrasound at Swedish Hospital and meet with a more specialized OB. We left the clinic feeling incredibly sad and scared, praying that the next ultrasound would bring better news.

The following week, the ultrasound results gave us worse news. The amniotic fluid surrounding the baby was too low, stunting the baby’s growth. The ureters in his urinary tract were blocked, making him unable to urinate properly. Instead of the amniotic fluid recycling itself through the baby’s body, it was building up in his abdomen. The doctor called it Prune Belly Syndrome, a rare disease (1 in 40,000!). He also diagnosed the baby with Potter’s Syndrome, meaning the baby wouldn’t develop lungs or the lungs would be too small to sustain him. At that point, the baby didn’t have any lung tissue showing up on ultrasound. While the doctor couldn’t confirm the gender of the baby via ultrasound at this point, he assumed the baby was a boy because PBS primarily happens in boys. The doctor told us that Isaac had a 0% chance of survival. I felt numb and did not understand why this was happening. Did I not hear God correctly when He told me I would have a son?

After another ultrasound in early September that continued to show Isaac on the decline, Frank and I met with a Genetic Counselor, who advised us on our options. We could choose to terminate the pregnancy or wait it out, which wouldn’t likely take very long. I could expect a miscarriage at any time or a stillborn once I hit the 22-week mark. Without lungs, Isaac wasn’t compatible with life. However, we couldn’t give up so quickly and told the counselor that termination was not an option for us.

Being told that I was carrying a baby destined to die before he ever took a breath brought deep anguish and copious amounts of tears. Frank and I had already chosen the name Isaac because it meant laughter, which fit well with my name. It grieved me to think that I might not ever hear Isaac laugh. However, his name reminded me of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, out of obedience to God in Genesis 22. Even though it didn't make sense, Abraham was faithful to God, and out of it came so many blessings. I wanted to be faithful to God, too. Therefore, I chose to sacrifice my comfort and carry Isaac as long as possible. I laid down the expectations of a healthy baby boy and surrendered Isaac's life to God. Placing Isaac and our situation at the altar, I stepped forward in faith, knowing that blessings would follow.

While it’s easy to say I have faith, living it out is not as easy. None of what I was dealing with made sense, especially since God had told me I would have a son. What I was dealing with was certainly not how I envisioned what having another child would be like for my family. As a little girl, I remember talking with God about how much I loved babies and how even the thought of losing one would break my heart. But here I was, preparing for the death of my son while he was still growing inside me, hoping and praying for a miracle.

Here is something I wrote in my journal so many years ago while I was waiting for the worst: “This baby belongs to God and is only on loan to me. I want to be thankful every day the Lord blesses me with his presence in my womb. Life on earth is short for some and longer for others. I don’t want to act like God doesn’t know what He’s doing. I fully trust Him, no matter how much it may hurt during the trials of my earthly life. My heart feels like a piece of it is being ripped out, but I shouldn’t feel that way. After all, there is still a baby moving inside of me. His heart is still beating. I don’t want to mourn or grieve over something that hasn’t even happened. God may or may not heal this baby boy, but in the meantime, he’s growing in me, as is my love for him. I’m just going to have to go before God’s altar every day and ask for strength to get through the day. I will not allow this to make me fall apart. I am stronger than I think I am, so long as I have Jesus. God can do anything! He can heal this baby and allow Frank and I to raise him, or He can cradle this baby up to heaven, where Isaac Daniel will be perfect and whole, waiting for his earthly father and mother.”

And that’s what I did. Every day, I asked for strength and took my feelings before God. He comforted me and waited with me, even when I was angry with Him. Every appointment and every new horrible thing the doctor told me tried to discourage me from standing firm in my faith. Feelings wanted to keep me from functioning, trying to trap me into a vicious cycle of suffocating despair. Feelings made me question God and myself. But I had a deep-rooted faith that propelled me to put one foot in front of the other as I waited for what was to come. Instead of waiting for his death, I waited for Isaac to be born. I thanked God for Isaac because every day with him was a gift to be cherished. And in the end, Isaac would know how much his mother loved him.

At my 28-week ultrasound, the doctors found only two vessels in the umbilical cord instead of three, and growth had slowed in Isaac's arms, legs, and head. His abdomen grew larger, and the amniotic fluid surrounding him got lower. They thought his growth would stop altogether, and then his heart would stop beating. BUT Isaac showed the doctors what a fighter he was, and there was finally a glimmer of hope at my 34-week ultrasound.

The final ultrasound before Isaac was born gave everyone joy for the first time since the initial prognosis. Not only did I gain four pounds in a week, but I could feel Isaac moving more, which was odd since there was so little fluid surrounding him, making it hard for him to move around. So my OB sent me in for another ultrasound. During that ultrasound, the technician was confused and asked the doctor to come in and look for himself. The measurements showed that Isaac’s abdomen hadn’t grown since the 28-week ultrasound. Also, it showed that he had lungs, though they were unsure of the size. AND the blockage in his urinary tract wasn’t complete. They saw some fluid process through Isaac’s kidneys during the appointment! The amniotic fluid also increased quite a bit, hence my weight gain. My OB was excited to get this update on Isaac, and she scheduled an appointment at Swedish for another extensive ultrasound to find out more.

I never made it to that appointment. Instead, my water broke almost a week later at 35 weeks. An hour after coming home from hanging out with a friend in the afternoon of December 7, 2002, I was startled when I stood up to find my water had broken. Frank quickly put me in the car and drove me to the hospital. On the way there, I kept saying it was “too early,” even though I had prepared for Isaac’s early birth for many weeks. The reality of it all finally hit me. Before the last ultrasound, we decided it was best for Isaac not to intervene once he was born and put him through unnecessary medical care. However, with the recent ultrasound showing things that baffled the doctors, we had a new decision to make. And we had to make it quickly.

Choosing to intervene because there were too many unknowns at that point, my OB sent me in an ambulance to Swedish, where both Isaac and I would get the best medical care. The ambulance was necessary because my last pregnancy went so fast (3 hours), and though I didn't feel them, I was already having contractions. No one wanted to risk the possibility of my giving birth en route in my car either. Plus, my OB was sure that I would need a c-section. After giving me meds to stop contractions, I was chauffeured to Seattle by the medics. It was a bit surreal, and it all happened so quickly that my memory is a little foggy of it. I barely remember the ambulance ride other than Frank got to ride with me.

Once I arrived at Swedish Hospital, nurses and doctors surrounded me. There was a hustle to get me into a private room and ready for what came next. One of the doctors did a quick ultrasound to measure Isaac’s abdomen to see if there was a chance I could deliver naturally. The results left me with another big decision to make - how I wanted to give birth to Isaac. The doctor could rush me off to have a c-section, or the doctor could do a procedure with a BIG needle to drain fluid off Isaac’s abdomen to make it safe for me to deliver him naturally. There were risks with both, not to mention that I hate needles almost as much as I hate surgery! Opting to give birth naturally, I got prepped for the procedure. I won’t go into details other than it was painful and left a scar.

After the doctor got 7 ounces of fluid from Isaac's enlarged abdomen through my own, she gave me Pitocin to jump-start labor again. Thirty minutes later, around 9:30 pm, and with the help of eight nurses and doctors, I delivered my son. Amazingly, Isaac tried to take a breath, but the doctors did not want him trying to breathe on his own because the size of his lungs was unknown. Thankfully, Frank held Isaac for just a minute before they rushed him off to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. It all happened quickly, and I barely got to look at Isaac before they took him to the NICU. I had been preparing myself for weeks that I would hold Isaac right after his birth while he passed from my arms into the arms of Jesus, but that didn't happen. Instead, I was left with empty arms to wonder what was going on down the hallway from me.

Shortly after giving birth, my family visited, as well as my pastor, his wife, and the friend I had just met with earlier that day, but no one could see Isaac yet, not even me. They didn’t stay long because of hospital visiting hours, but it gave me a little strength seeing them and knowing they were praying for us. Once they left, Frank and I moved to a different room. Since I didn’t get to keep my baby in the room with me as a typical new mom did, the nurses moved me to a regular hospital room with two beds in it. It felt cold, sterile, and unfeeling. My mind felt tormented with worry, my heart ached with an unexplainable pain, and my arms were missing something they desperately longed to hold. Sleep evaded me. Darkness enveloped me. Not only because it was the middle of the night but because of the deep cries from within me. I wanted nothing more than to run down the hallway, pick up my baby, and get as far away from that hospital as I could. But I was helpless, and Isaac needed help.

Finally, at 2:30 am, we got to go inside the NICU and see Isaac again. Honestly, it was a little scary seeing him the way he looked. I doubt any mother is prepared to see her new baby swaddled in a plastic crib with tubes from machines coming out on both sides of it. Isaac only weighed 3.5 pounds and looked very small and fragile. An oscillator hummed in the background as it gave a steady breath to his lungs. As I gazed over my new son with a mother’s unconditional love, I realized that his lungs, though small, were big enough to work. They may need help at the moment, but they would sustain him. Not only did my 0%-chance-of-survival baby survive past birth, but he also developed lungs that he wasn’t supposed to have! And even though I knew Issac was still a sick baby, I still saw him as my little miracle. He was the son that God told me I would have. A baby who wasn’t supposed to live, but he did.

While there was no laughter on the day that Isaac was born, there was a knowing in me that whatever life God had in store for Isaac, his life would have meaning, no matter how short it might be. Isaac’s birth was a miracle for me. A sweet answer to prayer, though not exactly the way I had hoped for it to be. And though I cried many tears and felt many different emotions that night, I pressed into my faith and celebrated the fact that I had more time with my son. I would cherish each moment I had with him and be forever thankful to God for choosing me to be Isaac’s mom.

TO BE CONTINUED…