Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

The outpouring of God's love and grace for me and my family was nearly overwhelming this past weekend when we had to rush our week-old premature baby girl to Shreveport's Sutton's Children's Hospital via ambulance Friday night.

There's nothing more helpless as a parent than watching EMTs load your four-pound baby girl into an ambulance and tell you that per hospital policy you have to follow them, without riding with your child.

Lily had experienced some dehydration issues in the first week of her life caused by a handful of different things, not the least of which was that she simply has entered this life way too early. She and Mom have been nursing well, but a variety of factors -- including an infected umbilical site on her belly button -- sent Jeannie back to the doctor with her Friday on a trip that eventually landed us in Shreveport.

Lily's bilirubin level (don't ask me to explain it, just Google it) had jumped back up to around 19 Friday. That's high but not dangerously high, or so the absolutely fabulous nurses and doctors at Sutton's told us. The important thing was to put the baby back under the bililights and work on her jaundice while also treating the infection on her belly button. The bad part about that was we had to be separated from her at all times outside of the three-hour intervals when she needed to nurse.

Lily instantly began to improve and by Sunday was out from under the lights. We received some much needed tips on watching for her dehydration, which is very common in premature babies we were told. She is nursing now much much better and longer, and we are making sure she gets more than she needs by supplementing her diet with a few millileters of breastmilk and/or formula at feeding time. As of this morning Lily has gained nine ounces in a week, based on her weight last Monday at the pediatrician's office. Since Friday alone she gained seven ounces in less than five days. She is much more alert and stays awake more often (high bilirubin makes a baby sleepy, which can cause them all kinds of trouble getting started at feeding time) and we have been instructed to be more careful with her in terms of making sure we are as clean and germ-free as possible when handling her. With all this in hand we were discharged and returned home Monday after the longest four-day weekend of our lives.

That's the personal update on Lily. The great thing for us as parents is that not only is our little baby well but we are now reunited with our other children, who had been scattered to all points over the weekend. We had some nice little family time Monday night and yours truly is back at work today, with mounds of catch-up stuff to do before going officially on vacation next week for Coby's annual World Series.

A couple of observations I wanted to make about our weekend at Sutton's Children's Hospital. First of all, I can't imagine a better facility for parents to take their sick baby. From the time we walked into the door -- actually before that, with the nurses in the ambulance who came over to assist Lily's transfer -- we felt like every person who came in contact with our child truly and deeply cared for her and her well-being. You know, it wasn't like some times when you might go to a medical facility and you feel like you're just providing someone's paycheck.

We arrived at the hospital about 10 minutes after Lily and within 15 minutes one of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) doctors came out to the lobby to talk with us. By then they had the baby under the lights and were starting the antibiotics. After briefly talking with the doctor, who was just as caring and open as the nurses were, we were allowed to go see Lily for the first time.

She had been placed in an isolation room, away from the other premies, because she actually had already been home and out of a hospital. The other children there had come straight from a delivery room or via ambulance from another hospital. Every child at Sutton's NICU has a personal nurse at their bedside 24/7. They can't cough, pee or poop without medical personnel knowing about it instantly.

The care Lily received this weekend was unbelievable. Her doctor at the NICU hugged us and the baby repeatedly when we left Monday; I can only imagine the love and care you might get while staying a longer amount of time. Within a matter of days Lily had become a member of the family. She was repeatedly held, stroked and hugged throughout the weekend, and it wasn't just me or her mother or her siblings or family.

The second thing is that while I am so thankful for these dedicated medical personnel, I am also quite saddened and my eyes were opened once again to the tragedy that abortion has brought to our nation. Sutton's NICU has 41 spots open for premature babies, and as of Friday night when we arrived 34 of those spots were filled. That was 34 tiny, tiny babies, all of them born long before their due dates, and every single one of them on some level was fighting for its life.

We saw babies that made Lily look like a high school senior. No kidding. We saw one baby that was just barely over two pounds -- I could have held it in the palm of my hand. Most of the babies were in their incubator boxes which were covered with thick blankets, to simulate the dark conditions of the womb. Tiny, tiny, tiny little babies.

And every one of them was fighting to stay alive. Some of them had been there for weeks, and we noticed that some never seemed to have any family by their side. We asked about this and were told that some babies have to stay at the NICU for so long that their parents/family have to go back to their hometowns, work during the week, and them come back over the weekends.

Yet anyone can walk into an abortion clinic and immediately snuff out the life of one of these tremendous fighters at any given moment in America. No questions asked, no crime committed. We have ignorant Senators in the U.S. Congress belittling the banning of partial-birth abortions during the Sotomayor hearings this week while some little two-pound, two-month premature baby boy battles for every breath with a patient nurse caring for him every second while his parents work to pay the bill.

You tell me. Does that sound like something that should be decided by some congressman or judge? Or does it sound like cold-blooded murder?

Anyone who is pro-choice or pro-abortion, I would encourage you to take a tour of a NICU facility similar to the one at Sutton's in Shreveport. If you can come out of there with the belief that abortion is something that should be defended, after watching those little babies fight to stay alive, then I would truly say there is little hope left for our nation.

God bless the little children and the little babies, and the ones who have been gifted with the ability to care for them. And I thank Him from the bottom of my heart for Lily and all my children, and for my wife, who helps give them life from the time they are born until they will one day leave us.

And we thank all of our friends and family who helped us through the past couple of weeks. Your phone calls, text messaging (thank God also for Facebook!), visits and prayers were intimately appreciated. God truly cares about us and can take even the darkest times in our lives to teach us some of the best things about living in the Light.