Birth Can Be as Close to Death as It Is to Life

I sat there in my wheelchair, staring at the tiniest baby I had ever seen covered in what looked like a plastic bag with wires and tubes coming from her nose, mouth, chest, and belly button. Unable to touch her due to her being so fragile, I rested my hands against her incubator and began to pray. I was thanking God for sparing her life as I very nearly lost my daughter, my fifth baby, that day.

Prepare for resuscitation. Prepare for demise. That’s what the NICU team said when they came into my daughter’s birth. Her heart rate had dropped into the 40s for several minutes during the pushing stage, and at one point, her heart rate was lost. There was a lot of shouting and chaos in the room as she was born—exactly the opposite of what I had planned, which was a peaceful home birth. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. This is all wrong, were my first thoughts when I saw her tiny three-pound body for a mere instant before she was whisked away, countless doctors and nurses rushing around to save her life.

It would be hours before I could see her, 24 hours before I could touch her, and four days before I could hold her. Missing out on the first moments of her life tore me apart in ways I didn’t expect. Seeing her there with her nearly transparent skin hooked up to machines, not much bigger than my own hand, created guilt and feelings of inadequacy. Having to leave her there, day after day, over 90 miles away required shutting off my brain, becoming completely numb to my emotions and instincts in order to get through.

You see, this wasn’t my first baby. It wasn’t even my first pre-term birth. It was, however, my first traumatic birth. I had four other children. I knew what birth could be—in fact, birth is single-handedly my favorite thing in the world. Name one more important, influential way to spend the day other than bringing an eternal soul into the world. Birth is empowering, incredible, truly the most exciting way to spend a day. But, as I had just found out, it can also be excruciating, terrifying, and as close to death as it is to life, which had been the case with my little girl born at 31 weeks due to placental insufficiency and an infection in the amniotic fluid, umbilical cord, and placenta.

You hear about tragic stillbirths or women whose worst nightmares come true, but you never think it will happen to you. It hit like a punch in the gut how close we had come to visiting a grave instead of a hospital bed.

“This is truly a miracle. I’m not sure how she made it this far. Typically this would cause a second-trimester miscarriage or a stillbirth. The placenta had multiple through and through tears and was completely infected and failing,” the doctor had said. Those words ran through my head as I sat there staring at the monitors, feeling overstimulated by the constant beeping and buzzing that I would grow all too accustomed to over the next 39 days spent in the NICU.

Again, thankfulness overwhelmed my soul as I wondered why the Lord had shown us such mercy in sparing my little girl when I know so many have not been shown the same grace. I will never know the answers to these questions but I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever.

Being a NICU parent is something you truly don’t understand until you have been there. It’s everything you never wanted for your baby, but are completely powerless to change. It strips you of your confidence as a parent and replaces it with constant anxiety that often doesn’t disappear upon discharge. Often, it is life-changing in ways you wouldn’t anticipate with the smells and sounds haunting your sleep, causing nightmares and flashbacks of having no choice but to be brave in your most vulnerable state.

I was amazed to see the ways the Lord brought us through each difficult day, and truly led my heart to a place of complete faith and reliance on His plan in a way I don’t think I could have experienced otherwise. It was in those moments I began to ask a lot of questions with a raw honesty and desperate searching I hadn’t ever experienced. Do I know that God is good? I think so? Do I know God is in control and His ways are higher than may ways? Well, in theory, but clearly not in practice. Do I believe God is in control and His will may not be my will but that He allows trials to bring about perseverance, maturity, and hope? Well, sure but this trial feels like one I would rather skip. No, thank you, I’ll take a simpler trial, please!

To be honest, I had never so frankly and personally encountered the idea that one of God’s beloved children could be simultaneously in the midst of heartache and yet also perfectly within the will of an almighty and loving savior. Pain and God’s goodness are not, in fact, mutually exclusive. I feel like I’ve learned, in ways I likely could not have apart from a situation like this, that faith is not an obstinate insistence that your way will be done, but instead, faith is the heartfelt acceptance of the goodness of the Lord and contentment in the path He has for you, knowing He will bring about the strength required to aid you through the challenge.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” (Psalm 46:1-2)

My baby girl has been home for three months now, and while the wounds from the traumatic birth and NICU stay are still there and the smell of hand sanitizer still causes my blood to run cold, I can honestly say I am thankful for the experience and can see the reliance upon the Lord it has caused.

You will make it through, mama. This time will pass. It may pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass. Your baby will one day be only yours. You will feel bonded to your baby and capable of taking care of them. One day, this will be only a memory, filled with equal parts pain and a strange nostalgia for a place you never wanted to be, but bloomed anyway. He is good, and He can be trusted.