As babies develop inside the uterus, fluid forms in their lungs and flows out their mouths, contributing to the amniotic fluid that cushions and protects the growing fetus. Dr. Harrison proposed to use this very fluid to help Sara’s baby’s lungs grow bigger. The surgeon would temporarily close off the baby’s trachea. The fluid would then build up inside his lungs, and the mounting pressure would cause them to expand like inflated balloons.
During the previous two and a half years, Dr. Harrison had attempted the procedure on eleven babies. Only one had survived. But in ten of these cases, Harrison had opened the mother’s uterus to operate on the fetus, which usually precipitated a preterm delivery before the babies’ lungs had any time to grow.
More recently, Harrison had devised newer, less invasive techniques. Instead of cutting open the mother’s uterus, Harrison was now prepared to perform the surgery orthoscopically. So far he’d tried the improved techniques on only one baby, which had subsequently died.
“You’re an excellent candidate for the surgery, but I’m not going to give you any false hopes,” Harrison told the Siebers.
During their visit Sara and Tim also consulted with a hospital obstetrician and a social worker. Both strongly advised the couple not to proceed.
“We’ve seen what these mothers go through, both emotionally and physically, and their babies die, anyway,” the obstetrician argued.
The social worker reminded Sara that she had three children back home: Timmy, now nine, Ryan, seven and Jacob, four. “You’d have to move to San Francisco for at least six months. Imagine how that long an absence might affect them.”
During the flight home, Sara made up her mind. “I’m not going back there,” she told Tim. From the start, Tim’s primary concern had been his wife’s health. But thus far all of the mothers had come through the surgery without serious complications. “This is the only chance we have to help our baby live,” he reminded Sara. “Maybe we should give this more thought, discuss it with our doctor back home.”
There wasn’t much time. Sara was already twenty-four weeks pregnant. For the surgery to succeed it had to be done by week thirty, because after that the baby’s lungs would begin to produce increasingly less of the vital fluid.
Sara and Tim prayed over their decision. They consulted their obstetrician, who told them, “I’ve seen too many babies choke to death because they simply don’t have enough lungs to draw their first breath. If there’s anything you can do, no matter how slim the chances . . .”
The Siebers’s minister agreed. “You’ve been given the knowledge that this surgery exists. You have to do whatever you can, and then trust in God to do the rest.”
“I still wasn’t any more hopeful,” Sara remembers. “But I thought, maybe the doctor could learn something that might eventually help some other baby to survive.”
The couple left their three sons with Tim’s parents, and before they returned to California, they named their unborn child Samuel. “We named him in honor of the Bible story of Hannah, who dedicated her son’s life to God,” says Sara.
Dr. Harrison began the four-hour operation by making a transverse C-section incision in Sara’s abdomen. A sonographer then helped him gently maneuver the baby face-up inside the womb and suture a single stitch through his chin to hold his neck in place.
Next, Harrison made three pencil-thin holes in Sara’s uterus and amniotic sack with surgical trocars—hollow tubes through which he manipulated his instruments, a saline pump to keep the amniotic fluid clear and a camera to monitor his every move. With slow precision the surgeon guided a pair of long-handled orthoscopic scissors toward the baby’s neck and snipped a single, small cut. He parted the skin, and then used a special, titanium lip to close off the baby’s trachea.
“That should do it,” Harrison announced to his team as he prepared to close. The operation had gone remarkably well, and the surgeon felt cautiously optimistic.
Dr. Harrison hoped that Samuel would remain inside his mother’s womb until he reached his thirty-fifth week—five weeks shy of full term. But the moment Sara came out of the anesthesia she felt sticky and wet.
“What’s wrong?” she groggily asked a nurse.
“Your water just broke,” the nurse replied, and hurried off to find the doctor. Despite Dr. Harrison’s best efforts, the trauma of surgery had taken its toll. Sara’s sack had ruptured, and preterm labor was imminent. Yet it wasn’t uncommon for a twenty-eight-and-a-half-week preemie to survive with the aid of warming beds and respirators. But not Samuel. With no time for the trachea clip to do its job, Sara’s baby seemed fated to die.
But then something remarkable happened. Somehow, the baby shifted position inside the sack, and his tiny head stanched the leak. Slowly, the amniotic fluid began to replenish itself. The pressure inside Samuel’s lungs also continued to rise, and within a few days sonograms revealed substantial lung growth.
“God had intervened, and I was convinced everything was going to be fine,” says Sara. But on the twelfth day post-surgery, a second complication arose.
The morning Sara was scheduled to be released from the hospital to a nearby Ronald McDonald House she developed a painful infection that put both her life and the baby’s at risk. This time there could be no reprieve. Live or die—Samuel had to be born.
Dr. Harrison performed a partial C-section, delivering only the baby’s head and neck. He removed the titanium clip and sutured shut the skin. He put in a breathing tube connected to a high-frequency respirator that delivered over three hundred gentle puffs of air every minute. Only then did the surgeon complete the delivery and cut the umbilical cord.
Samuel was nine weeks premature, and weighed a mere three pounds, nine and a half ounces. “He made it this far. That’s got to be a good sign,” Dr. Harrison insisted, but other members of the neonatal ICU staff weren’t nearly so hopeful.
“You need to prepare yourself. He’s not going to live,” more than one doctor told the Siebers bluntly.
“They kept Samuel so heavily sedated, for the first two weeks of his life I really couldn’t tell if he was alive,” recalls Sara. “We prayed and prayed, but no matter what happened, Tim and I both agreed we’d made the right decision to try.”
Hour by hour, day by day, little Samuel defied the odds and clung tenaciously to life. When he was a week old Dr. Harrison performed surgery to install a Gore-Tex patch to replace the missing left half of his diaphragm. Two more operations would follow—the first to repair a bilateral hernia and a second to correct a bowel obstruction.
When Samuel was five weeks old, Sara finally got to hold him in her arms for the very first time. “His skin was so translucent, I could trace the map of blood vessels across his tiny body,” she says. “I told him how much I loved him, and all about his three brothers who couldn’t wait for us to bring him home.”
Even at two and a half months, Sara was still being told by the NICU doctors, “Don’t get your hopes up. He’s still not out of the woods.” But Samuel’s lungs continued to develop and grow stronger.
Then, late one evening, Sara and Tim received a phone call at their hotel room. “You might want to come back to the hospital,” a nurse told them. “We’ve removed the breathing tube. Samuel is breathing on his own.”
“His feeble cries sounded like a tiny, lost kitten,” Sara vividly recalls. “After twelve long weeks of prayer and worry, I couldn’t imagine a sweeter sound.”
Two weeks later, Samuel was strong enough to fly home to North Carolina. Members of the Siebers’s church met them at the airport carrying a large sign: “Welcome home, Samuel! We love you!” Fellow passengers who had heard the story applauded and cheered as Sara deplaned with her precious cargo cradled snugly in her arms.
That was in July of 1996. Today, more than two years later, Sara’s youngest has grown into a happy, active child who loves riding his tricycle and playing on the backyard swing set with his three brothers.
Samuel’s right lung has reached normal size for his age, though
his left lung is only about one-fourth of the normal size. “The Gore-Tex patch will need to be replaced as he grows older, but he hasn’t had a lot of problems they thought he might have,” says Tim Sieber.
“We’re all very pleased with how well Samuel has done,” says Dr. Harrison. “He’s been a true inspiration for our ongoing work.” Indeed, since Samuel’s birth, Harrison and his team have used their refined surgical techniques to operate on eleven more infants with congenital diaphragmatic hernias, and eight are alive and doing well.
One who was particularly moved by Samuel’s success was the hospital social worker who had originally tried to talk Sara out of undergoing the surgery. “The day before I got to take Samuel home she came by and asked if she could hold him,” Sara relates. “There were tears in her eyes, and she kept saying again and again, ‘You’re nothing but a miracle. You’re nothing but a miracle.’”
Bill Holton
Lesson in Courage
Birth is the sudden opening of a window through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect.
William Dixon
Numbly, I walked through the neonatal intensive care unit.
“He’s been through so much,” I breathed, as I peered at my little boy in his incubator. How long can he keep going like this?
“He’s a fighter,” doctors had told me. But in my heart, I couldn’t find the courage to hope. Little did I imagine it would be this little fighter himself who would teach me the meaning of courage. . . .
My husband Jon and I had rejoiced when we found ourselves staring at a positive home pregnancy test.
“A baby brudder—or sister!” cried Samantha, four, and Emma, three.
Then one night when I was just twenty-four weeks along, a sharp pain and a gush of fluid jarred me awake. “Something’s wrong,” I panicked.
“There’s a small tear in your amniotic sac,” the doctor said. He hoped medication would delay my labor until the baby’s lungs could develop. But one week later, contractions started.
“You have a uterine infection,” the doctor said. “We have to deliver the baby now, or we could lose you both!”
“No!” I sobbed. “It’s too soon!”
Holding me, Jon soothed, “Everything’s going to be okay. He’s going to be a fighter, just like you. You’ll see.”
But inside, I knew he was wrong about my being a fighter, because with each contraction, fear tore through me. How can I bear to lose this baby? I anguished.
Seven hours later, Sean Eric Fox, weighing just one pound, seven ounces, came into the world without so much as a peep and was whisked to intensive care before I could hold him.
The next day, when I saw him for the first time, I was filled with despair. Unlike the healthy, pink babies his sisters had been, Sean had lobster-red skin. His eyes were closed. And he had so many tubes, I couldn’t find a place on his body to touch.
“Is he going to make it?” I stammered.
“We’re doing our best,” his doctor answered. He explained that because Sean was so premature, his lungs so underdeveloped, there was a chance of blindness, brain damage, death. “A lot will depend on Sean,” he added. “If he’s a fighter, there’s a chance.”
But I barely heard his words.
“We’re going to lose him!” I wept.
“No!” Jon insisted. “He’s going to make it!”
Back home, I tried to carry on as if everything was okay. “When is Sean coming home?” the girls asked.
How could I explain that their little brother might never come home. Sitting by Sean’s incubator, my heart pounded each time a monitor went off to signal his oxygen level had dropped. What if they can’t help him? I’d panic as nurses rushed over.
And when, at three weeks, nurses finally let me hold Sean, I was so scared of hurting him. Yet as scared as I was, Sean seemed utterly fearless. Even when his lungs were working so poorly that his fingernails turned blue, he’d curl his hands into a tiny fist and swing them furiously as if to say, “I’m not giving up!”
I’m so proud of him, I often thought. But deep down, I worried how long he could keep fighting. Would I ever see him again? I wept when doctors said he needed surgery to repair a hernia that was strangling his intestines.
Though he came through the operation with flying colors, my heart ached with worry. And when his oxygen level dropped again, as it had so many times before, I couldn’t hold back my tears. “He’s not getting better,” I wept. “He’s never going to come home.” But that evening as I sat in the intensive care unit watching Sean kick with all his might as the nurse changed his dressings, I couldn’t help but smile. “I guess he really is a fighter,” I chuckled.
“That’s why he’s come so far,” the nurse said. “Whatever life throws his way, he fights back with everything he’s got. That’s why babies like Sean make it.”
Hearing her words, a little twinge stabbed my heart. She’s right! I gulped. No matter how many times his oxygen level dropped, no matter how high his fever raged, nomatter how much pain he was in, Sean never gave up. Oh, I knew the doctors and nurses had fought hard to keep him alive, but I sensed there was something more keeping Sean going. He doesn’t know the odds are against him! I realized. All he knows is that he’s alive and he’s got to keep fighting—kicking those legs, churning those arms, clutching with those tiny fingers.
If a six-week-old preemie can fight that hard, why can’t I? I thought, brushing away a tear. Constantly thinking about the worst that can happen isn’t going to help anybody—not Sean, not my family, not me. And though I wasn’t sure how, I knew that, somehow, I had to be more like Sean.
“It’s not going to be easy for an old worrier like your mom to change her ways,” I whispered. “But I promise, Sean, if you’ll keep fighting, I’ll try, too.”
As if he understood every word, Sean squeezed my finger with all his might.
Until then, I’d been too afraid of hurting Sean to learn how to give him the special care he needed. Now, I reasoned, the more I learned, the less scary it would be. “Could you show me how his monitors work?” I asked his nurse.
At home the next day, when I peeked into the empty nursery, instead of feeling sorry for myself, I told myself to imagine Sean in my arms as I rocked him.
When the girls asked, “When is Sean coming home?” instead of sinking into despair, I’d say, “He’s getting bigger every day—he gained a whole gram yesterday!”
A few weeks later, when I brought Samantha and Emma to see their baby brother for the first time, my heart filled with joy as they cooed in awe. To my amazement, I no longer doubted that Sean would one day climb the jungle gym in our yard with his big sisters. Slowly, I’d let hope fill my heart, and to my amazement, I’d discovered a strength I’d never known.
And as if Sean sensed my renewed spirit, he seemed to fight even harder. And after twelve weeks, he finally came home weighing a hefty three pounds, fourteen ounces!
“I told you he was a fighter!” Jon said as I took Sean to his own nursery for the first time. “Just like his mommy!”
“Thanks,” I smiled. “But I learned everything I know about being a fighter from my son.”
Today, Sean is a healthy toddler who loves Popsicles and playing peek-a-boo with his sisters. I’ll always be inspired by the fighting spirit that saw him through those first hard days—and taught me everything I know about courage and hope.
Ami Fox as told to Dianne Gill
Excerpted from Woman’s World
Dads Will Be Dads
While I was pregnant with my first child, sweltering through the endless, fiery summer months in which ankles swelled and sweat poured forth profusely, I wanted only one thing—to give birth.
“I can’t wait until this child is out,” I would huff and puff in frustration.
My husband lovingly reassured me that the baby would spring forth at the appointed time. That some day I would be free from the burden of the added weight and the painful swollen ankles. I, however
, felt as if the child had taken up permanent residence.
“Suppose the kid likes it in here and doesn’t want to leave,” I would say.
“Highly unlikely, dear. The baby will be here before you know it,” he insisted, his feet still grounded firmly in reality, while mine were constantly elevated.
As it turned out, when my water broke that fateful evening, I was shocked into reality. Our first daughter did leave the womb and enter the atmosphere. She even arrived three weeks early.
When Mary was born, I was overjoyed. Not only was it a relief to hold her tiny body in my arms, but she was a red-headed beauty. Even when she was minutes old, I felt that we had a unique attachment. And we did, for she had been a part of me. However, what I didn’t anticipate was how difficult it would be to let her go.
For those nine months that seemed like an eternity, the baby had been mine . . . all mine. She was joined with me and depended on only me for survival. Even though Tom could feel her kick through the womb as she grew bigger, I usually had to notify him that she was moving. He depended on me to tell him what the baby was doing. The communication that Mary and I had was ours alone. Now, she was in the world and I had to share her with others. Including her dad.
Now, it’s not that I didn’t trust him. My husband is a compassionate husband and father. It’s just that he doesn’t do things the way that I do them.
He held the baby differently. I cradled her close, showing her my maternal love. He held her facing outward so she would have a world view. He transported her differently. I carried her in my arms from room to room as I tidied up. He placed her in the stroller and rolled her around so that he could put things away and still keep an eye on her. He comforted her differently. I rocked her quietly to calm her; he bounced her. He even fed her differently. I breast-fed her at 2:00 A.M. He bottle-fed her at 2:00 P.M. (Okay, so I can’t hold biology against the poor guy.) It’s just that it was difficult to accept that someone could relate to Mary in another way. Undoubtedly, I was very insecure, and sharing her was hard. Even with her dad.
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