This pregnancy was precarious from the beginning. I began spotting almost immediately and I felt a certain sense of fear that I couldn't shake. I told others but no one seemed to hear; not really. At the beginning of my second month, I was confined to my bed, in an effort to help fight for the life of this child. On a Sunday evening, at 16 weeks along, my four children, the oldest 8, lined up beside the couch I was laying on to get their kiss goodnight. As I watched them walk upstairs like the kids in Sound of Music, I had a strange sense of foreboding and I wondered if I would see them again. It ran cold through my bones, that thought, and I couldn't take my eyes off my children as they disappeared from my view.
Within the hour, I began hemorrhaging; clots the size of my fist. The kids safely asleep and unaware, a nearby neighbor was called to come and sit in our living room while we rushed out into the night towards the hospital. It occurred to me that I might not come home again. I felt a deep sadness mix itself into my fear. Everything around me became strangely distant and I felt completely alone in what was happening. I was walking through a door that no one could go through with me. I don't remember arriving in the emergency room.
It's like scenes in a movie, fading in and out, one on top of the other; sounds and pictures. I woke up, having passed out from the bleeding, in a bed, the doctor by my side explaining to me that the baby was implanted dangerously low and it was a matter of time whether one of both of us died, if something wasn't done, and so an exam was performed in an effort to hasten the impending miscarriage. In the middle of that long night, a little girl was born, 16 weeks strong. She inhabited her place in this world for 20 minutes. Her name was Naomi. They told me later that she was perfectly formed, perfectly healthy. She'd have been a fighter. She made me proud.
And then began the business of saving my life. I opened my eyes in the operating room, a sense of frenetic energy all around me. I felt no pain. Faces leaned into me, silhouetted by the bright light shining in my eyes. I was in total peace and yet still, my kids were what I was thinking about. "Am I dying?", I heard myself ask out loud to no one in particular. No answer came for a long minute and then.... "No." and I didn't believe it. I saw that person run out of the room. Whoever that was had said what they had been trained to say, but in that moment, I realized a heart was breaking for me. "Father?", I remember whispering, "Into Your hands I commit my spirit....into Your hands....into Your hands." And then I was gone.
I received enough transfusions that night to fill 4 adults, the blood spilling out of me so fast they tipped the operating table I was lying on upwards in an effort to use sheer gravity to keep it in. In the end, they performed a hysterectomy and still, the bleeding did not stop. I was put on a respirator, a heart catheter was inserted and my bed was rolled into ICU. My kidneys were beginning to fail. The team of doctors did all their hands and minds knew to do and then they joined those same hands and stood around my bed and prayed on my behalf. And everyone waited. On Tuesday I woke up.
My father was the first face I saw. He had attached my favorite Bible verse to a small eagle statue and had it sitting on a tray beside me. "They shall mount up with wings like eagles," he read out loud to me. Two days later, my bladder burst and the nurses rushed into my room and wheeled me out toward the operating room. One of my friends was standing in the hallway. I will never forget the look on his face. His voice followed after me...."Hang in there, Tamara. We're praying for you." How much I wanted this not to be happening. To go back and stand beside him, to not be in any danger. That night I was back in ICU on a respirator.
In the end, it was ten days before I saw my kids again. I was pale, thin, bruised from all the needles and tubes running in and out of me, some of which followed me home. As I began to recover, nurses and doctors from all over the hospital came to see the "miracle girl." My friend made angels out of lace and passed them out to the staff. Two years later, I would come to visit my friend in that same hospital to see her new baby. I saw one of the lace angels still hanging up on the wall.
The night before I was to be discharged, the nurse came in to settle me in for the evening. A thunderstorm was brewing outside and I asked her to open the curtains. As I lay there alone, I watched the flashes of lightning and realized I knew what it felt like now to be in the palm of God's hand. Because no matter what the outcome would have been? I can tell you, it felt safe in His hand and I knew that I knew that all was well.
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