My first Mother's day as a mother of 5 children was the most eventful one I've had, and not one I'd like to repeat!
On May 11th Noah seemed normal. He slept a little longer than normal, but he's a newborn and they sleep a lot. Adam commented several times that Noah felt warm to him, but I kept saying, "he's a baby, they're supposed to be warm." I kept myself in denial because I didn't want him to be sick, I wanted everything to be fine. Finally at 11:00 pm we took his temperature and he was at 101.2. For a newborn anything past 100.4 is an emergency. We moved quickly after that, called a neighbor and sister-in-law to come stay with the other kids and took Noah to the children's hospital. I was praying constantly and had the continuous impression that if we took him in he'd be fine.
Once we got to the hospital we had no waiting time. They immediately took Noah, and within 20 minutes we had seen 10 different workers, they had urine, blood, spinal fluid samples, and we working on getting him an IV. I was a mess. Literally couldn't stop crying. I was so scared at what was happening to him, and if he would be ok. They told us that the most serious thing would be spinal meningitis, bacterial or viral. They treat newborns for bacterial meningitis the minute they get to the hospital, just in case. That's how serious it is.
After they got an IV in, they had to put it in his head, and had all their tests taken they took us to our room. I was still a constant mess of tears. At about 1:00 am we got settled and Adam went home to be there when the other kids woke up. I tried to get some sleep and finally got some rest only to be awoken at 3:00 am by the Dr telling me that he did have spinal meningitis. Now they needed to do more testing to see if it was viral or bacterial. We would need to stay 48 hours until all the testing was done. I texted Adam to let him know. I knew it was early so I didn't want to make any calls to the family yet. I couldn't sleep and just kept crying in between feeding Noah and watching him sleep.
I had the thought not to say anything on Facebook because it would mean more people asking me how I was, which I thought would bring on more tears. But I decided a post would be a good thing, and then asked for prayers. Within minutes of my Facebook post I was able to stop crying. I figured that I was finally pulling myself together. A few hours later I went back to that post and couldn't believe the outpouring of people who said they were praying. The post was shared and I saw people I've never met, from places I've never been. As I was reading all these, the spirit showed me clearly that that was why I was suddenly OK. These prayers had given me strength and sustained me.
It was a very long 3 days, but all was well. We took Noah home Wednesday morning. I didn't leave the hospital, I couldn't bear to be away from my sweet baby. Adam was able to take work off and stay with the kids, he brought them to see Noah and our ward helped with dinners.
Why do bad things happen to sweet babies like Noah? Because part of life is the opportunity to witness miracles. We witnessed many during this terrifying time. We are so grateful that he is ok. We love him so much!
