This has been one of the most difficult things for me to ever write. Just the thought of sitting down to try and organize my thoughts and feelings to share and relive this portion of my life has been so overwhelming that I’ve avoided it for more than nine months now. I decided that for Mother’s Day and in honor of my incredible wife, Sarah, I would try my best to share the story of how she became a mother.
After more than a year of trying, Sarah and I were ecstatic
to find out that she was pregnant. Our
first visit to the doctor wasn’t until Sarah was 14 weeks pregnant because of a trip we had taken to Washington D.C. During the
ultrasound portion of that first visit, the technician asked if we were going
to find out the gender. We said yes and
then were surprised a few moments later she told us that we were having a boy!
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We didn’t go into that doctor’s visit expecting to find out
the gender of our baby. This was the
first of many events that happened earlier than anticipated in the months that
followed. We spent the last few days of July and first few days of August in Florida with family. Toward the end of our trip, Sarah began
experiencing pain in her lower abdomen and lower back—the first contractions of
her pregnancy coming much earlier than expected at about 22 weeks.1
A few days after we got back from Florida, the pain hadn’t gone away so
Sarah called her doctor’s office and they told her she could come in the next
morning. Not thinking it was a big deal,
I went to school while Sarah went to the doctor. Later that morning, Sarah called with a brief message: “Come
home now. You need to take me to the
hospital.”
When I got home, Sarah was standing in the front room with
the lights off, holding a bag. I could
tell she had been crying. She cried as
she told me that she was in preterm labor—she was dilated to 2 cm and the
membranes of her amniotic sac were bulging through her cervix—and she needed to
be admitted to the hospital. I
definitely wasn’t expecting to drive my laboring wife to the hospital when she
was only 23 weeks pregnant.
After being admitted, Sarah was hooked up to a monitor and given
antibiotics through an IV. She was also
given magnesium sulfate to help stop labor and a steroid shot to help the baby’s
lungs develop. A technician came in and
did an ultrasound and then a nurse asked if we would like to talk with a doctor
from the NICU. The question caught us off-guard and we both burst into tears. Neither of us felt ready for this. The thought of talking to a NICU doctor about our baby was the furthest thing from our mind when we got up that
morning.
The doctor from the NICU came and visited with Sarah while I
was back at school, getting everything I had left in my hurry to get her to the hospital. He told her that if our baby was born at 23
weeks that he would have a 5% chance of survival. Sarah’s doctor arrived later that evening and
said that we would take it day by day, but the hope was that she would make it
to about 34 weeks. He instructed that Sarah
should sleep that night with her feet elevated to use gravity to help the
membranes go back into her uterus.
Neither of us slept well that night. Fortunately, however, by morning the membranes had moved
away from her cervix and Sarah no longer had to lay in such an uncomfortable position. The day passed uneventfully
and we decided to plan for the long-term bed rest we hoped for: I would sleep at home, go to school and then
spend the evenings with her in the hospital.
I slept at home that night and called Sarah the next
morning before I went to school to work on my research. She said that she had had a few contractions
during the night but that they had stopped and everything was fine. Sarah sent me a text that afternoon: “Started
having contractions again :(” About
fifteen minutes later she called and asked me to be done at school, telling me
that she’d like me to come be with her.
I was not ready for what was on the other side of the
hospital room door when I opened it.
Sarah had nurses on both sides of her and as our eyes met, I knew something was wrong. She looked at me and said, “We’re
having this baby. Call Amber.”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but at this point Sarah
knew we weren’t going to be able to keep our son. She had spent much of her time in the
hospital thinking and praying. She knew
that God had performed many incredible miracles and keeping our baby inside of
her and allowing him to continue to grow would be a small miracle in
comparison. She had prayed and told
Heavenly Father that she wanted to be on bed rest for weeks to allow our baby to
continue his development but also prayed for the strength to accept His will if
it was contrary to her desires. When the
contractions picked up and she was going into labor, she knew that it was God’s
will.
Sarah's doctor was on his way. The nurses did an ultrasound to see the position of the baby. He was vertex (head down). The nurses told Sarah that she was going to feel like she needed to push but that she shouldn't until her doctor got there. She asked what she should do for the pain, since the birthing class we had signed up for didn't start for a few more weeks.
"Think of your favorite passage. Repeat your favorite passage," the nurse replied. Immediately, the words of Proverbs 3:5-6 came to my mind: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths."
Psalm 41:10 entered Sarah's mind: "Be still and know that I am God."
A few moments later, the nurse was quoting Philippians 4:13 to Sarah: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
Sarah's doctor arrived a few minutes later. He broke Sarah's water and then said, "That's not the head." In those few minutes, our baby had flipped around and was now breech. He said they needed to do an emergency C-section.
Moments later, the doors to the operating room opened as our son was taken to the NICU, escorted by a team of doctors and nurses. My first glimpse of our child was mostly a blanket with a cap. They went by so fast I felt like I hadn't really seen him.
Amber asked me if we had decided on a name. Since Sarah had been in the hospital, I had had some strong feelings about the name Shad, but we hadn't had a chance to talk about it.
A nurse hurried down the hallway toward us. "Mr. Brockbank?" The urgency in her voice made my heart sink. I nodded and she said to follow her. Her pace in leading us to the NICU had me convinced that our son was dead or would be soon.
When we arrived to his room in the NICU, there was commotion but everything seemed to stand still. The doctors and nurses updated me concerning his status, telling what they had done and what they were planning to do. I didn't hear any of it. I don't know how to describe it other than sensory overload. There was my son, who I was seeing for the first time. I was a father and here was my child. I was completely overwhelmed. Even though we were surrounded by other people, it seemed like the two of us were the only ones in the room. I could not believe how much love I felt for him despite having barely seen him for the first time just seconds before.
After a few minutes, I was finally able to communicate with the doctor and nurses, who I asked to repeat everything to me again. His blood pressure and blood volume were both low. They had called for an emergency blood transfusion of 10ml to help with the low blood volume, which arrived right after we got to the NICU. Once they had given him the additional blood, they gave him Dopamine to help his heart pump faster in hopes of increasing his blood pressure. I asked one of the nurses if it looked like he would make it. She responded that it's hard to know in the first twenty-four hours as they are trying to stabilize everything and that they would have a much better idea in the morning.
Another nurse asked, "Does he have a name?" I choked up as I said, "Shad." I figured Sarah would be okay with it since she has loved that name for years. They wheeled Sarah down from the recovery room a few minutes later and she was able to see Shad for a little while despite her pain.
I was not ready for what happened when we put our hands on the incubator to give him a blessing. Up until this point, I had faith that Shad would be in the 5% who survive such a premature birth. When I began the blessing, I blessed him that his body would have the strength to survive and that everything would go well. As I continued, the Spirit told me very strongly that I needed to say, "if it be the Lord's will." I realized that my desire as a father to bless my son to live was contrary to my Heavenly Father's will. When those words entered into my mind, the tenor of the blessing changed. I blessed him that he would not suffer and that he would be an inspiration to those he influenced. In that moment, I knew he wasn't going to make it.
Sarah was resting in her room, so I stayed with Shad in the NICU. Despite knowing in my heart that he wasn't going to survive, I continued to hope that he would. I stared at the monitor with his heart rate, oxygen levels and blood pressure, looking for signs of improvement or decline but not seeing either. I just loved being in the presence of my son even though I couldn't hold him or touch him.
By this time, it was close to 11pm and I was starving. I went back to Sarah's room to get something to eat. We started talking about a middle name. I told her I liked Gabriel, and shared with her a verse that I had read in the NICU: "I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings." (Luke 1:19)
Sarah liked Gabriel as well so we decided to name him Shad Gabriel Brockbank. Minutes later, the doctor from the NICU came in. Our hearts sank, even though we both knew this moment was coming. Shad had internal bleeding, likely in his head. They could continue working on him or they could unhook everything from him and we could hold him before he died. We decided on the latter.3
I wheeled Sarah to the NICU in a wheelchair where they unhooked all the tubes from Shad. The nurses handed him to me and I gave him a name and a blessing. I was overjoyed to feel him move as I held him in my hands because I was afraid that he would die before I picked him up. We spent the next few hours with him, holding him, washing him, and loving him before going to sleep out of pure exhaustion. Everything happened so fast yet time seemed to stop for certain moments that will be with us forever, as our angel son entered into our lives.
I am grateful for a wonderful wife, the loving mother of our little angel.
1 At the time, she did not know that what she was feeling were contractions. She realized this later after she had experienced more contractions in the hospital.↩
2 Amber is a friend of ours who is a photographer. The previous night she had visited Sarah in the hospital and offered to come take pictures whenever our baby was born.↩
3 Amber was an incredible friend and told us before she left the hospital to call her if anything happened, no matter what time of day or night it was. When I called her, she was on a date with her husband at a movie theater, which she left to come take pictures for us. We are forever indebted to her for the beautiful pictures she took of Shad. They are priceless.↩
