Her
Mother’s Heartbeat
Forty-five years ago when I was a student nurse, all
my classmates loved obstetrics. Most decided they wanted labor and
delivery to be their life’s work.
I didn’t.
We were each assigned a pregnant “family” to follow
for three months. If the mothers’ math and God’s providence were
synched, the baby would be born before the end of that quarter. Then
we’d all write smiling term papers about the miraculous joys of
childbirth.
I didn’t.
After a somewhat uneventful pregnancy, “my family”
called. The mother had gone into labor. I threw my lab coat into the
car, speeding to meet the expectant parents at the hospital. “Barely in
time,” I was told. Labor had gone quickly. Up to delivery we flew while
I wrote hurried notes for my term paper.
We weren’t there long before the nurses told me
something had gone wrong. I remember the horror of too-much blood as
they hustled the father and me to a waiting room. Their baby lived; the
mother did not. I don’t know the end of their story. He understandably
asked for privacy.
It took me years to recover from my obstetrics
rotation. So when a short video clip about an inconsolable crying baby
showed up on Facebook, I almost scrolled on by.
I’m glad I didn’t.
The brief segment was about a family very much like
the one I had followed: happy, excited, as prepared as possible for the
new life about to bless them. And then tragedy struck. Something went
terribly wrong during the delivery.
The father’s naked scream reverberated off a delivery
room wall as the trauma team held him up to remove him from the scene.
This mother also died before she even got to hold her newborn baby girl.
Yet this time the story didn’t end there.
In the 1970’s organ donation was in its infancy.
Today hospital social workers create opportunities for good to come out
of heartbreak. A single death can save eight lives and more than fifty
other patients can also benefit.
Despite his overwhelming grief, the father followed
his deceased wife’s wishes—advance directives and organ donation they
never expected to implement so young. The next afternoon he and his tiny
daughter left the hospital. A nurse would visit them daily until their
lives stabilized. It was a sharp learning curve for a new father.
Physically she was perfect, yet the infant girl cried
inconsolably day and night. Numerous trips to the pediatrician
eliminated illness as a cause. Weeks went by, until one of the nurses
had an idea. They tracked down the recipient of the mother’s heart. It
now beat in the chest of a man in his forties; fortunately he didn’t
live too far away and was willing to travel.
The moment he held the wailing infant, everything
changed. He gently rested her head on the left side of his chest so she
could hear her mother’s heartbeat. The crying stopped. She smiled. And
then she drifted into the first contented and peaceful sleep of her
young life.
Author Kristen Proby wrote to her own daughter, “No one else will ever
know the strength of my love for you. After all, you’re the only one who
knows the sound of my heart from the inside.”
The video reminded me that there’s power in a mother’s love, comfort in
her heartbeat, and healing in stories told by brave parents who survive
such tragedies. It also reminded me that Advance Directives are
important documents. Life is more fragile than we like to admit.
Organ donation is a powerful way to take away death’s sting.
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