The first time I saw my son Sam, his head was the size of a tennis ball and his hands were no bigger than bottle caps. His little fingers were too small to wrap around my pinky, and I had to squint to count his 10 perfectly formed toes from my vantage point outside a glass incubator. He lay on a pint-sized water mattress, his spindly legs splayed out on both sides and his arms flat beside him. A tiny tube tugged at the corner of his mouth, and his foot was glowing red from a lighted intravenous needle that was supplying drops of nourishment out of a machine far bigger than he.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I thought about his state. How could a 380-gram baby endure all this? It was a good thing he was too young to see me clearly because pity seemed to be the last thing he wanted or needed.
When he opened his eyes and looked my way that very first time, he had an unexpected expression – not one of helplessness or fear, not hopelessness or anxiety. The look on his face that day was one of survival and acceptance. He seemed to be saying, “Don’t worry Mom, I’ll get through this.”
And I believed that he would. After all, he’d been through quite a lot already. Before he was born three months premature in a Hungarian hospital, he had already spent – in utero – nearly a month in a Ukrainian hospital. He had been rushed to emergency rooms in two other countries, and he had been the focus of so many sonograms that he was photographed more inside the womb than most infants are after birth.
He had been stricken with a condition called intrauterine growth retardation, a big name for a syndrome that inhibits development, usually causing babies to be born too small to survive without intensive neonatal care.
The symptoms started appearing in mid-pregnancy. A sonogram showed a deteriorating placenta, the food source for the fetus. There was also a critical shortage of amniotic fluid, which not only provides a cushion of protection, but aids in the development of the lungs and other organs. And from the fourth month, periodic uterine contractions were suppressing the umbilical cord and thus cutting off nourishment.
I sometimes failed to understand the words of my Ukrainian doctors, but there was no misunderstanding the look on their faces as they studied the sonogram images. There was a problem, and the problem was serious. Four times I was told that miscarriage was imminent. Twice I was advised to abort.
Weeks of deteriorating conditions left me drained of energy but not without hope. Through it all, Sam was hanging in there. Despite the horrible conditions, the heartbeat was strong and there were no signs of abnormalities. He was like a good kid living in a bad neighborhood, and the race was on to get him out before his environment got the best of him.
If my Ukrainian doctors could think of no other solution than a late-term abortion of a normal living fetus, then I would go elsewhere. I found a doctor in Budapest who convinced me that there were medical procedures, unheard of in Ukraine, which might give my baby a chance. That was all I was hoping for – a chance. I flew to Hungary the next week.
But on April 13 heavy bleeding and painful contractions sent me to a Budapest hospital hours before my scheduled appointment. Waiting for the doctor to examine me, I thought the race was over. This must be the start of the miscarriage that I had spent three and a half months trying to prevent.
Minutes later, however, the doctor found a strong fetal heartbeat; Sam was still fighting.
But the situation was critical. A sonogram revealed that he was a 26-week fetus the size of a 22 week old. There was no amniotic fluid, and the contractions were cutting off his lifeline every couple of minutes.
The immediate concern was that the placenta was tearing away from the uterus – a life-threatening situation for both of us. I was given two dreadful choices: do nothing and likely lose Sam and possibly my own life from hemorrhage, or agree to a Caesarian section, which would give Sam a 1 to 10 percent chance of survival.
Less than an hour later, I was in surgery. When it was over, Sam O. Spencer Elliott was born healthy and whisked away to a neonatal ward before I was even able to see him. It was an anguishing 24 hours before I was allowed to shuffle into the neonatal ward, still sore from surgery, and see my baby. The head doctor approached Sam’s incubator, put her hands in the porthole and peeled away a cloth that covered his body. “He is a very nice boy,” she said, hopefully. And then she cautiously added, “But he is very small.”
Three days passed and the cautious comments from the doctors were tinged with a bit of optimism. Sam was defying the odds. He was breathing on his own. His heart, lungs and brain showed no abnormalities. He was even getting droplets of mother’s milk. But they always ended their updates by reminding me that Sam was “a very small baby.” No baby of his size had ever survived at this hospital. At 380 grams, he weighed less than a liter of milk.
His biological condition impressed the doctors, but it was his very baby-like responses that won the hearts of his parents during our hours-long visits two to three times a day. He flailed his arms and legs at the sound of our voices. He squirmed when we tickled his miniature feet and armpits. He was even able to pull out his feeding tube after repeatedly waving his right arm wildly above him until he caught the cord around his thumb and yanked.
We expected great things from this young man. So on the seventh day when the doctor reported a complication – his bowels were too small to pass his first rock-hard meconium stool – I was unable to comprehend the implications. They said it was serious. “Yeah, I’d heard that before,” I said to myself.
The next day, the graveness of his condition sunk in when the doctors reported convulsions. His left arm was stiff in the air, and he was clenching his fist. His miniscule body twitched with spasms.
The expression on his face had changed, too. He was still grasping onto life, but it was clearly a struggle. He seemed to be saying that he couldn’t hang on anymore. At 10:30 p.m., he let go.
May 13th – Mothers’ Day in the States – would have been Sam’s one-month birthday. It was a bittersweet day for me. I was reminded that there will never be a card, breakfast in bed or a kiss and an “I love you, Mom” from Sam on this day.
But when I reflect on my brief stint as a mother, I can’t help but feel fortunate for the eight days, 11 hours I had with such an exceptionally strong and inspiring person. After all, not many people get to meet their hero; I spent a lifetime with mine.
