I know, I know -- I was a mother before my oldest child was born. But pregnancy doesn't begin to compare to the task of raising a child after they are born.
My first child was born 8 years ago this morning. Motherhood is always a life-changing event. But I think everyone would agree that Elli's arrival signaled a larger life-earthquake than usual.
I had no idea that just three days later, on Leap Day, I would hold her for the last time for 3 whole weeks, in a triage room at the Children's Hospital Emergency Department. The next morning she would be clinging to life by a hair-thin thread, on full life-support after suffering a 30-minute cardiac arrest while being treated for jaundice in the NICU. I had never been to an intensive care unit before, and I'd never seen such a little person surrounded by so many machines, all critically important to her survival. She was quivering, a machine breathing for her, probes and wires and lines everywhere pumping medicines and nutrition into her and monitoring every possible signal her body gave out.
The next time I would be allowed to hold her was the day before a grueling 12-hour open-heart surgery. The nurse in the photo above is carefully holding Elli's breathing tube as we get settled into the rocking chair. Normally, you do not take a ventilator-dependent baby out of their bed. You rarely take a child out of bed who has lines going directly into their heart, as Elli did at this time. But we all knew that the odds of the next day's surgery going well were slim. Getting to hold my daughter that day was an act of mercy on our nurse's part. Even though I tried really hard not to think about it during those precious moments, I believed this might be last time I held her in this life.
The next day, when the surgeon asked us to sign the consent forms for surgery, he told us that he gave Elli a 20% chance of getting through the procedure alive. We didn't tell anyone until after the surgery. We knew that she had a 0% of surviving without the surgery, so the choice was simple. Agonizing, but simple.
And God was merciful to us. He granted her body extraordinary strength. She pulled through the surgery, and though the days and weeks immediately following were full of breakthroughs and setbacks, she slowly and steadily improved. We moved out of the ICU, moved back in, and finally moved out for good. We began to hear the magic word "home." We learned how to feed her by pouring formula and expressed breast milk into a tube that went through her nose, down her throat, and into her stomach. We learned how to put that tube in ourselves. We learned about all her medicines, which ones could be given together, which ones to give with food and which on an empty stomach, and which ones could not be given with other ones. It was mind-boggling and we were overwhelmed. But God provided grace, friends, and excellent nurses to teach us.
That first year felt like an eternity. I was more sleep-deprived than at any other point in my entire life. I used to fall asleep during Elli's occupational therapy appointments, and slap myself while driving home to avoid falling asleep at the wheel. I desperately wanted to get to the point where I could handle it on my own, without help, but I also knew that I was nowhere near there yet.
Now, 8 years later, I am even more awed at what God did in those first few weeks and months for Elli. She should not be alive today. She should not be breathing on her own, using a computer to communicate, and cracking people up with her sense of humor. But she is!
She is a beautiful miracle girl, and even though we still have our moments, I love her and am so thankful for her. I have so much more to learn about her, and I feel so inadequate and ignorant most of the time... but I know that God will continue to give us all the grace, wisdom, and endurance we need to get through each day.
Happy eighth birthday, Elli! We love you VERY much!
(Now, will you please go to sleep at a decent hour tonight?)
