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CBN.com – “They said, ‘We feel the feet are in the birth canal, and there’s just no turning back at this point.’”
“Feet first” aren’t words that any expectant mother wants to hear. In Heather Bush’s case, they were her baby’s death sentence -- she was less than six months pregnant when it happened.
Dr. Barton recalls, “It’s quite serious, because at 23 and a half weeks, she’s really at the limits of viability. The survival of the baby would be expected to be less than five percent.”
Heather and her husband Jimmy were excited to be expecting another child – a sister for Camden. But one night, Heather noticed some bleeding …
“I wasn’t expecting any trouble since I’d never had any,” Heather says.
Her husband Jimmy says, “I was pretty clueless as to what a big problem it was.”
Heather’s doctor put her on bed rest but wasn’t alarmed. So Jimmy went on a scheduled business trip to Japan.
“Great,” he said. “We’re done. Now I can focus on work stuff and everything will be fine – just like Camden’s [birth] was.”
But everything was far from fine. A week later, Heather started bleeding again, and a friend rushed her to the hospital.
“As soon as I got in there, things happened really quickly,” she says. “Right when I got in, my water broke. The feet are in the birth canal, and there’s just no turning back at this point. They said, ‘You know at 23 weeks we can’t even try to save the baby; there’s not enough development.’”
That night was the worst of Heather’s life. Her mom and friends came to comfort and pray with her.
“They said, ‘When she’s born, you can hold her until she dies if you want, but there’s nothing that we can do. We won’t take any life-preserving measures.’ That for me was the absolute hardest – knowing that nothing was going to be done. I just had to hold my baby ‘till she died. The biggest part of that was that Jimmy wasn’t there -- knowing I was probably going to get to see her and he never would. That was really, really hard.”
Jimmy booked the first flight home. He couldn’t believe what Heather had told him. He says, “That’s when she really told me that, ‘the baby’s probably going to be dead by the time you get off your next flight.’ I hit my knees. ‘God, I can’t deal with this! Just take this away from me.’ It’s just helplessness that I couldn’t even be there to experience it with her.”
Through tears Heather and Jimmy named their daughter over the phone Kaia Mae. Then Jimmy asked her to lower the phone so Kaia could hear daddy’s voice one last time. He sang, “Goodnight Sweetheart.”
Heather recalls, “I’d wake and feel so sad that this still has to happen. That reality just made it a horrible night. I kept claiming those verses: ‘All things work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.’ The other part, ‘Neither life nor death can separate us from love of Christ.’ I just kept repeating those verses. It really gave me that sense of peace that no matter what happened, how sad I was, I wasn’t alone.”
Morning came, and Heather’s doctor examined her. Then he said he wanted to do another ultrasound…
“To see her knowing she would soon be dead was going to be unbearable,” Heather says.
The doctor called his partner in to take a look at the screen.
“We were asked to evaluate her the next morning after she came in with her ruptured membranes,” Dr. Barton says, “and at that point, her membranes had resealed. That’s very unlikely to happen.”
Heather says, “When he looked at that ultrasound picture, she was not in breech position. Her head was down; there was plenty of fluid. He just didn’t know what to think and called the other doctor in, presented all this to me, held my hand and said, ‘OK, we’ve got some news!’”
Heather couldn’t wait to tell Jimmy when he called from the airport …
“I did not want to make that phone call,” he says. “I sat down, and it was great! It was my favorite phone I’ve ever used!”
“We don’t know what’s gonna happen,” Heather says, “but I was just thinking, ‘This is gonna be a miracle. This didn’t happen for no reason. Something big’s going on here.’”
The Bushes celebrated every week that went by, most of which Heather spent on bed rest. Kaia made it all the way to 40 weeks and a bit beyond! As the doctor said, the Bushes got their miracle.
Heather says, “As soon as he walked in, he said, ‘I hear I get to deliver the miracle baby. I’ve heard a lot about this one.’”
"Probably less than five percent of patients who reseal in the third trimester will seal the membranes and accumulate the fluid, but that’s indeed what she did,” Dr. Barton says.
“It was the culmination of so much prayer,” Jimmy says. “Plus she looked like me, so I liked that a lot.”
Heather and Jimmy were each deeply changed by the whole experience.
“We’re not in control, and God is in control,” she explains. “Sometimes that doesn’t make any sense, [but] there is peace and a way to hold onto faith during whatever circumstances -- no matter how it plays out or what the ending to the story is.”
“Some thing it’s really taught me is the power of having a community praying for you,” Jimmy shares.
Heather concurs, “He still works miracles and does amazing things!”
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.
