The Blessing of Isaac

Isaac Christian Dahman

was born on Friday, January 11, 2013

at 5:51pm and went to be with the Lord at 7:35pm.

He weighed 1 lb. 4oz. and was 12 inches long.

 

Life is rushing by me right now....so fast that I sometimes find it difficult to breath.

It is as if I am standing still and life is happening around me.

Sleep is my favorite time of day. That is when life floats away and I am free to forget. I awake to remember that this is now my life.

 

Friday, January 11, 2013 at 5:51pm our sweet baby boy, Isaac was born. At 5:00pm my nurse and I were listening to his rhythmic heartbeat thumping away on the monitor. The next fifty-one minutes would forever change our lives. Contractions came suddenly, hard and fast, as if labor was forgotten. An ultrasound would show the faintest blip on the screen that not long before was a strong and healthy heartbeat.

The next thing I knew I was lying on the operating table. I couldn't breath into the mask fast enough as I thought of my baby struggling, clinging onto life. Through these moments I uttered the words "Please God, protect me and my baby." I drifted off to sleep as doctors prepared to do an emergency c-section to try to save my baby's life.

The next thing I knew I was waking up.

"We didn't have to cut you." they said. "He came out all on his own."

He was here.

There was a whole medical team huddled around him in the corner of the room trying to do all that they could medically to resuscitate him. I would be told later that they resuscitated him three times.

 

As they tried to take me into recovery I had to yell at them to stop!

 

I knew that in that moment I many not get to tell him all of the things that I wanted to tell my son. So, I made them stop so that he might hear these words.

"Isaac Christian, Mommy and Daddy love you so very much!" I yelled to him across the room.

And for a moment, everyone and everything stopped.

It was as if the doctors and nurses that were "doing their jobs" were awakened from the routineness of it to the reality of a mothers heartache.

It was as if, that moment in time, it was just a mother and her newborn son sharing their first meeting and everyone else in the room faded away.

Just as quickly, all of the hustle and bustle began and I was whisked away from my baby boy.

 

All I wanted was for my husband to be there with me.

He has always been there for every delivery.

This time it was so different as he rushed to be by my side

and into the uncertainty of our son's life.

 

By the time he got there Isaac was in my arms being kept alive artificially so that his daddy could hold him and see his beautiful face.

 

We were bombarded with all of the "options" that were not really options in Isaac's case but it seemed more of a courtesy and protocol for the hospital to offer.

 

I had prayed that, if this had happened, that God make it very clear to us what needed to happen...and He did.

 

There was no life and no response from his tiny fragile body. The machines and the medicine would only prologue the inevitable....

 

We had to let our baby go.

 

And so we did.

 

As I lay my children down to bed every night I sing to them this lullaby.

This is what I sang to my son as he opened his eyes for the first time to see the face of his Heavenly Father.

 

(to the tune of Edelweiss)

 

"May the Lord, Mighty God, bless and keep you forever.

Grant you peace, perfect peace, courage in every endeavour. 

Lift up your eyes and see His face, and His grace forever. 

May the Lord, Mighty God, bless and keep you forever." 

 

I love you my sweet, sweet Isaac...

"May the Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from the other."