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Glen's Story
The Miracle Boy
My son Glen is now 9 years old. When I became pregnant
with him in 1992 I was 39 years old. Because of my age it was recommended
that I have a procedure done to test for possible genetic problems. One
of the byproducts of that test was that they were able to tell me the baby's
gender. I remember the day I got the phone call from the doctor telling
me that the tests were all clear. Then they told me it was a boy! All I
had were girls and it stunned me so much that I actually dropped the phone
and began to cry. After I hung up the first person I called was my husband,
then I called my dad. My sister answered the phone and I told her. She
said "It's a boy?" and I heard my dad in the background whoop, "She's having
a boy????" No baby was more eagerly anticipated.
Then halfway through my pregnancy tragedy struck. I was sitting and watching television when I felt my shorts suddenly become very damp and a cramp hit me that almost doubled me over. Over the next few days I was examined and tested and it was found that, for some unknown reason, I had lost all of the fluid surrounding the baby. The outlook was grim. I was told that statistically 85% of women who have this happen lose their babies within the first 24 hours, after that the odds got worse the further it got away from the initial event. I was told that, although I had made it a week, my chances were very good that I was going to lose my baby.
I was sonogrammed and it was found at that point that the baby was still in good shape. I was given the option of attempting to continue the pregnancy but I was warned that if my son was born extremely early he ran the risk of having extreme congenital defects. I went home and discussed it with my husband. Mostly I prayed; for my child, for guidance, for solace. After a great deal of thought I told the doctor I wanted to continue the pregnancy. My overwhelming feeling when I looked at the sonograms was that, for now, there was nothing wrong with my baby. He was a fighter. I was his mother and I was going to fight, not for him, but with him.
The pregnancy was rough. I had to go to bed and stay there, I could lift nothing, do nothing but go back and forth between my bed and a lounge chair in the living room and, ultimately, wait to see what nature would do. There was no treatment for my conditiion, although the doctors could help support my pregnancy. It was all that they could do. Ten days after the rupture happened the baby turned into a breech position and, ultimately, saved himself. His little behind plugged off the leak and slowly the fluid began to reaccumulate.
I continued to see the doctor twice weekly, still had to stay in bed and wait and could do nothing. But as week after week went by and the fluid levels stayed up I began to believe more and more that my baby, the fighter, was going to make it. 12 weeks after the initial event my doctor walked into the exam room and handed me a little pink Energizer Bunny. I looked at him and looked at the toy and he told me it was his symbol of my pregnancy. Despite everything the medical texts said, despite all of the dire warnings, my pregnancy just kept going and going and going. He laughed and hugged me...and then told me that I had already surpassed the record for this type of thing in the groups entire practice.
16 weeks after the event, on New Year's Eve of 1992, I went into the clinic for my, by then, routine sonogram. Once again, I had lost all of the fluid. But this time it was different. I was 36 weeks pregnant and my son could survive being born. I was immediately prepped for surgery and that afternoon, my son was born by caesarean section. Just before he was born, while I was in the labor room being prepped for the surgery, a young resident came into the room and hesitantly told me that there was still a chance that my baby could not survive due to undergrowth of the lungs from lack of fluid while I was pregnant. Strangely, I was entirely serene. I knew that my son was going to be born just fine. When they brought me into the operating room an entire team of nurses from neonatal ICU and a neonatal specialist were waiting for my boy. The truth was, they had no idea WHAT they would encounter. The perinatal specialist made the first cut and 2 minutes later he was in the world. I heard a cry that could be heard 6 blocks away...and cried. There was a collective sigh of relief in the room and they handed him to his father who then brought him to me. I stroked his tiny cheek and they whisked him away to neonatal ICU. He was tiny; 4 pounds, 14 ounces, and only 17 inches long, but he was fine, just as I had known all along.
Two days after he was born my doctor came into my room at the hospital and he sat down and we had a long, glowing conversation. He told me that if my baby's birth were expressed in statistics of survival, given the conditions under which he was born, it would have been expressed in terms of less then 0.01%. He was quite literally, a miracle. Prior to my son's birth the longest they had ever had a mother with a midtrimester event like mine go before losing her baby was 8 weeks. I had gone more then twice that, a total of 16 weeks. There were 5 doctors in the perinatal practice. Eventually two of them would publish articles in the American Journal of Perinatal Medicine related to my pregnancy and my son's birth. My primary doctor was later offered and accepted a post in New York.
Over the years since his birth he has been tracked and followed by several doctors. He is an anomaly to them. He has, to this date, done well. He has completed second grade and was awarded a certificate of excellence in reading for achievement beyond the curriculum goals of his grade. He is a bit of a "nerd" type; small for his age but tough and wiry. He has a passion for trains, computers and computer games and a sensitive side to him that makes him treat babys and kittens with uncommon gentleness for a little boy.
Indeed, given his beginnings, I have faith that he will grow up to be an uncommon man.