I cover my ears to the screams.
A piece of my heart, on the other side of the door, screaming, gasping, heart-racing-infant-cry. The first one, the first to stretch my spirit and my womb, crying out in fear and pain, in the small room, surrounded by doctors and nurses.
Brave, strong Kevin, the One-Given, leans over our tiny baby, trembling, weeping, singing, praying. But I cannot endure it. I walk the hall, clapping hands over my ears, to cover the wails, "Oh God! Please, God, please; please God, please!"
Five days prior, I was the one gasping, crying out in pain. All my natural-childbirth plans scrapped; in the depths of back-labor transition, I cannot endure the pain any longer. At eight-centimeters dilated, the long, slim needle brings instantaneous relief. Twelve hours of first-time labor, and I'm finally able to lay back and breathe and rest and pray.
It's so hard, O God! It hurts! Help me!
Within 30 minutes I'm strong enough to push and push and push with the Eve-cursed-God-given bearing down of life, and Caleb bursts forth in an agony of relief.
He is well.
He is perfect.
Tiny hands, pink and curled around my finger. Pursed lips already reaching instinctively for the nourishment God's miracle has provided. I weep, and Kevin leans in close, shaken, misty-eyed, awe-struck. All our friends are gathered close; we are the first of our tight-knit group to welcome a baby, and the tiny boy is passed around gingerly, reverently. My mother is there, Kevin's family too, as they both celebrate the first grandchild to arrive.
We bring him home to balloons on the mailbox, streamers across the porch, decked-out nursery; spoiled and doted upon and adored-baby-welcome. He is the firstborn. Nary a mew escapes his lips before I pull him close, bringing him to my breast, heart of my heart, flesh of my flesh.
Four days and five nights later, I wake at 2am to the sound of his soft cry for nursing. I lean over the bed, reaching into the bassinet, and pause, heart-in-my-throat. His tiny hands grasp rhythmically upwards, his face contorting ever-so-slightly. Swiftly, I pull him close, and the movement subsides, as he nurses contentedly. A strange quirk of infancy, yes?
Day breaks, we yawn, my mother and my husband and I, and we stretch and smile, hovering over his bassinet. Is there anything more perfect? More precious? Like clockwork, 3 hours after his last nursing, 11am, and he mews like the tender lamb he is, calling for Mommy. I reach to scoop him from the bassinet, and there it is again, this time more pronounced.
Calm, in-control, I cradle his tiny body to my chest, "Kevin, call the doctor. He's having a seizure."
I recognize the rhythmic movements, the clenching of fists, the pinched face, and staring-sightless eyes. More than a decade before, tiny cousin Lisa contorted in my arms, the same movements, the same horror of something-other, seizing her little body. My hero Aunt Liz knew all too well the pain of such afflictions on a piece-of-her-heart, and more. Severe cerebral-palsy, shattered dreams, lost hopes, the gift and the agony of a chronically-ill child.
With these fears twining into my brain, electrical-storm twining into baby Caleb's, we race to the ER.
And so there I am, in the hallway, clapping hands over ears to shut out the atrocious-unfairness of infant screams.
Suddenly all is silent. I fear the worst, am horrified to discover, and yet rush to find: Kevin leans over the treatment table, shaking, sobbing, hands on 5-day-old Caleb. Wires and needles and syringes everywhere, sprays of sticky-red from so many blood draws and failed IV attempts. Tiny boy splayed out, motionless. "Oh God! Oh God, please! Is he okay, is he okay?" He sleeps, comatose, passed out from pain and trauma and post-ictal seizure activity, at last resting from the horror of what has possessed him.
The ambulance staff lets me sit close, cradling his head, threading arms through wires and tubes. I pray and cry and beg, fearing that we will lose him before reaching Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.
And so the pleading, the deal-making, the striving to learn the secret-handshake begins.
All week we pray. Keeping hospital-bedside vigil, red-eyed with grief and exhaustion.
Oh God, please! Please, God! Please don't take him away! Anything, God! Retarded or crippled or cerebral-palsy or a vegetable; but please, God, please don't take him away!
Five perfect days we had him. Five perfect, unknowing, naive days. Five days while fallen-world, sin-shattered, what-did-I-do-wrong, brokenness brewed inside our perfect baby boy. And then the bomb went off, and the weakened-vein burst, and blood filled, and brain swelled, and twelve years of waking nightmares began.
Lest you fear; he is still here.
Well.
Not unbroken, yet healed.
For God's glory.
But not the end of the story.
Part two,
Part three,
and yet more to see,
still to come.
click here for more on 'TheCalebMiracle' -
part 2, part 3, part 4, Watching Him, and A Freed Heart
