Premature Babies - Blessings

This last week I re-read Sara's account of Lucy's arrival, and I noticed a comparison I hadn't made before so I'm sharing it.   On the one hand, I'm not going out of my way to dredge up your words from your lives of faith in the past, but on the other, I don't see any reason to avoid it either.      --Mom,  April 2018

 

Donna writes: 

The day Henry came into the world has stayed with me..

Jared called from SLC and explained their situation—the baby was in trouble and needed to be taken early, in fact, that day.  I drove right to SLC, hoping to reach the University hospital before the C-section.

Sick with worry, I tried to be calm.  Doctors know what they’re doing and Liz’s mid-wife sister, Celeste, was there for back-up.  We watched Liz in her hospital gown walking down the hall to surgery, surrounded by staff and her sister who all made her look small.

Back in their room with Jared, he was solemn.  Most of the time with wet cheeks, he said things like, “This is really a common procedure, right?  They do it all the time,” trying to reassure himself.   There was nothing I could say.  I couldn’t promise him anything—not for Liz, not for their baby. 

 

And then it was over. The baby came, was passed straight into NICU where electricity put his heart in sync.  Liz got stitched up and was back in their room, looking pale but immediately on her phone, texting and making happy calls.  Jared stayed by the incubator.  I felt enormous RELIEF and gratitude as I left their little family, and I realized how utterly exhausted I was from the tension.  It was nearly dark. 

 

But I had another task.  At Primary Children’s Hospital next door, tiny Grayson McEvoy had surgery that day.  In fact, Jim Mac had come over earlier and helped Jared give Liz a blessing.

I couldn’t leave SLC without seeing Tiffany and asking about the baby.  Grayson was a preemie one month old.  His little bowels had become perforated, spilling the contents into his abdomen.  The doctor had to open him up, repair the wound, clean up his tiny body, give him antibiotics for infection, and on and on.

The two hospitals are linked by a long corridor so I trudged over.  When I found Tiffany she was actually happy because the surgery was over and the doctors were pleased.  She said the skilled surgeon had explained the difficulties; operating on premature tissue was like "sewing wet Kleenex.” 

Tiffany suggested I go sit with the baby in NICU where only one or two at a time were allowed.  Honestly, I felt so tired and useless I would have preferred going home, but I couldn’t refuse.

As I sat in a rocker in the quiet room, alone except for the nurse, I knew I should pray. The sight of this tiny baby did not comfort me.  He lay sleeping, drugged up in a thick snarl of tubes, surrounded by a wall of big blinking machinery.  How could this little bitty thing ever recover from this procedure, much less grow up healthy? Grow up to be an actual man with whiskers.  It all seemed futile.  I stalled praying because I was so tired that prayer felt like work and really, all but vain under the circumstances--but I obeyed.

“Heavenly Father…,” I began.  Immediately the Spirit sent a flood of comfort and clarity into my mind and heart.  The powerful message was this: This child would surely recover and grow to manhood.  But more importantly, despite the amazing powers of modern medicine, technology and skilled physicians, the power of the Priesthood was infinitely greater and more powerful than the best of all of these.  It was like I could see the power and light over the hospital but stretching up infinitely.

________________________________________

 Sara's account of Lucy, written 2000

 

Sara: On New Year’s Eve we were saying goodbye to Lucy.  Before we left Steve gave her a blessing.

Steve:  It was really a moving thing for me.  I blessed her.  While I was doing it, I contemplated in my mind the relationship between technology and the Lord’s hand.  Faith.  During the blessing, it was like a window opened and I just caught some visions of how things work together.  While I think I knew this to be the case, it was just hit home with some clarity in her blessing.  I got the impression, “Look around at all of this wonderful technology.”  So I’m looking at all the machines.  At this point, stuff I had no comprehension what it did other than it was keeping our little girl alive.  Then I got the impression, “All of this is important and wonderful, and I, the Lord, am behind all of this.  But realize that this stuff will not keep her alive; it is the power of the priesthood.  That is what is behind this blessing.  Not the blessing itself, but the power of the Lord’s hand that will keep this baby alive. Everything else, all technology, wonderful though it is, pales in comparison.  There is nothing compared to the power of the Lord.”