A True Story

“God only knows the strength of my love for you. After all, you are the only one who knows what my heart sounds like on the inside.”~Jennifer Burris

~I love my son and daughter more than anything I can think of. I have loved them since the moment they were conceived in my womb. Their first movements fascinated me as I would see them ripple across my belly. I would put my hands on my stomach hoping for more of the miraculous movements. I cherished them. I anticipated them. The pregnancies were wonderful. The deliveries not so much. I wasn’t able to naturally bring either child into this world. My son wanted to keep waving from the birth canal. He had his shoulder and arm lodged in the passageway and the doctors couldn’t get him to turn around. They tried many times to manually turn him. I told the doctors I could not take anymore pain. Each doctor would call another doctor who thought they could do a better job than the last. I had reached my maximum threshold for torture and tried to relate this to the doctors. They thought they knew best over what I knew was best for my body. The next attempt to fix my son’s direction would make me flat line. My heart gave out and I died right then and there on the table.

~It all seems like a dream now. I remember exactly how I felt when I was going under. There was chaos all around me but I didn’t hear anything but silence in my head. My sister was crying but I could only watch as her tears rolled down her cheeks. I felt like I was drifting through the air. A sensation of weightlessness as I was floating above myself witnessing the scene below. I no longer felt any pain. The pain was a zero along with my heart rate. The darkness was still. It was like a veil over my face. I could see it covering me delicately but thoroughly from head to toe. I didn’t get to stay under long though. My sister would tell me that the medical team achieved in cutting my stomach open to get my son out who was in fetal distress and dying himself. An emergency cesarean that lasted all of 3 minutes or so did the job. Then, I was forced back into the living. The peace of no pain was over. All of the senses had flooded through me, drowning me as my body came back to life.

~I wasn’t able to see my son for a few days. He was in the ICU recovering from the trauma. When I finally saw him, there were bruises all over him on the one side of his body where he was consistently bashed. My little baby looked old and stressed instead of happy and newborn. He would cry all the time. I felt so bad for him. I was in that awful state of narcotics and excruciating pain. My stomach looked like a worn torn map. The huge ugly staples that were holding my layers of skin together were showing the way the knife had cut. My son and I cried a lot that first year. Him from being colic and me from healing and from sleep deprivation. I always think to myself that had I tried to have my baby in the old days before modern medicine, my son and I would have died during childbirth. There would have been no technology to save us. I am always thankful God had other plans for my precious firstborn and myself.

~This would be my first brush with death. There is one more but that story is for another time. I do believe God saved my baby and I. He wanted us to live. Man thought they knew what was needed and they in turn caused my death. Humans are limited in their abilities. Even the best trained in their respective fields can make arrogant mistakes. They can be too prideful of themselves and thus not see what is better for the other person. To put 100% faith in man is to be disappointed. It is not always a malicious case but in time one will be let down. God is the only one who has been there for me no matter what I was facing or going through. He has never turned His back on me or my son in our times of need. He doesn’t need me to explain where I am coming from because He already knows. He is pure love, unconditional and sacred like the love I have for my children. That is the only comparison I can imagine and He even exceeds that. He feels towards me what I feel towards my kids. That all-consuming almost impossible love but somehow it is always possible through God. Miracles do happen. I am living proof of them. My children were miraculously born as gifts to me from God. I will forever be grateful for Him stepping in when man fell short. Gotta love that divine intervention.