Bill sent a delightful story of the labor and delivery of these two babies. This is his story. Thanks Bill, for the beautiful, faith promoting story.
As Paul Harvey says, and now the rest of the story...... It goes something like this: Teri woke me in the middle of the night on Thanksgiving eve to tell me that she thought it was time to go to the hospital and have our babies. Having been in the medical business at that time, I reminded her that she still had two months of pregnancy to go and encouraged her to just go back to sleep. A little while later she again woke me saying "its time to go to the hospital". Again, I reminded her of my medical background and told her to go back to sleep. A while later Teri woke me and said that her water broke and was all over the bathroom floor. My eyes got big, we dressed in a heart beat and called the OB. He said that he would roust two neonatologist out of bed and meet us at Good Sam Hospital. We grabbed the "baby bag" and made tracks to the car. I'm sure I set a new land speed record when I backed my car out of the drive way. All the way to the hospital I was quietly hoping Teri would not decide to have those babies in the front seat of my new car.
When we got to the hospital, they whisked Teri off to prep her. I went into the doctors lounge to put on some scrubs. There, I found the OB sitting on the floor, back against the wall, smoking his pipe, while sporting a beard and a peace medallion. I asked him if we didn't need to get going and he said that "a man needs to have his pipe at 2 am". When we got to the delivery room, Teri was already there. The two young neonatologist were scrubbed and ready at the foot of the table. The OB directed me to a crank at the head of the table and asked if I could manage cranking up and cranking down when he directed me to do so. Hey, I have a medical background. Of course I can handle that. He then told everyone that "Here's the game plan....I will take the snap from Teri...hand off to the neonatologist, who will make an end run to the ICU....and I don't want anyone fumbling the hand off.....Ready?
Well first Blake pops out. They clean him off, hand him off and the neonatologist makes his run to the ICU. The OB then says "Are you read for the instant replay? We're going to do this again". About that time the second water bag breaks and sprays all over the doc. He then says "that's it, this is the first time you will hear of a doctor suing the patient....that kid just tried to drown me". He quickly changed his scrub shirt to a clean one and then delivered Brett. They cleaned him up and ran him to the ICU. In the mean time, I was doing my job of cranking the crank up and down when instructed to do so.
The nurses got everything cleaned up. Teri was shuffled off back to her room. Once the delivery table was empty, that's when I noticed that my crank was hot hooked to anything. "Oh, that is my husband occupier laughed the OB"....How embarrassing!!!
As the OB and I left the delivery room, I was on cloud nine. "Hey look at me, I've got two beautiful new sons"!! The OB was not happy however. I asked him what the matter was and that is when he told me that he had hoped the babies would be girls as premature girls are stronger than boys (What?). He also said that he wished they had been four pounds, but they were just over three pounds. Worst of all was that both boys had Hyalin Membrane covering their lungs so that their lungs would collapse on every breath. In a normal delivery the membrane dissolves during the last 24 hours prior to delivery so the babies can transition from a liquid environment to an oxygen environment. Since the boys were two months premature the membrane was still present and that almost all babies with this problem failed to survive. He said he did not think the boys would survive through the night. Obviously, I mentally went from the ceiling to the floor in an instance.
The babies were in incubators with tubes and catheters coming out. They would stop breathing and alarms would go off. The nurses would have to poke them to get them to breath again. And, of course they were having to breath through oxygen tubes. After talking with Teri and seeing the poor little pink 3 pound rats, I mean babies, I went home. That is when David called and as they say, you know the rest. Actually, David administered to one of the boys and I did the other one. I will never forget the electricity we felt and the power of the Lord as David and I were conduits for the priesthood healing power. I remember Teri looking in through the window as we blessed the boys through the incubators. One man came up to her, looked at the boys, and said "Oh those poor things, why don't they just go ahead and let them die"? Teri yelled, "Those are my babies and they are going to be just fine". I think he almost lost his life just then. I remember how amazed the OB was when, after the blesssings, the boys went right to room air and the x-rays not only showed no membrane, but no sign of it ever having been there. They were indeed miracle babies.
Now they are 6'2", 210 lb monsters with kids of their own Can you believe it? Anyway, it is certainly something I will never forget.
2 comments:
That is neat that he sent his perspective. Miracles happen all the time. I am so grateful to have the gospel.
That was great listening to Bill tell the story in his own voice. You can tell he's a jokester. That's still a fabulous story!
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