24th
DAVID AND HIS HAPPY GENE
I’ll admit that most women in my position would be happy about the news, but I just cried. Not that I didn’t love babies, (I already had a boy and a girl that I adored), I just hated the idea of being pregnant again, since for me, being ‘with child’ meant nine months of constant nausea and daily throwing up so violently, that the capillaries in my eyes would sometimes burst, giving me a black eye or two. My husband, Jeff, on the other hand was thrilled; so much so, that I don’t think you could wipe the smile off of his face if you tried. That made it worse for me. I knew in my heart that I needed to give this whole circumstance to God, which I did and I asked Him to make what good that He could out of my situation. In my experience, He has never disappointed me in that prayer. I expected that this adventure would prove the same.
Things in this pregnancy continued as I expected. The smells of certain foods, cigarette smoke or perfumes would send me running for the bathroom due to morning sickness, but about four months into this gestation, I knew there was something more serious going wrong. Tests confirmed that although my unborn child was strong, I had gestational diabetes, which would have to be controlled with a strict diet, four times-a-day finger pricking for blood sugar testing, and eight, (yes, eight) insulin shots per day. This was a blow, but my rule-following nature could handle the restrictions, because I understood the life-threatening implications of failure.
During this whole ordeal I had an unexplainable peace concerning my child’s well being. While I would expect anxiety in the face of the statistical percentages that were presented to me at regular appointments to my OB/GYN, I was calm in my mind, though my physical body was put through the ringer. By the time I was ready to deliver this baby, who I eventually learned was a boy, I had toxemia and other assorted complications. My labor was induced three weeks early at Fresno Community Hospital.
One funny thing happened while I was getting settled in the labor and delivery room. There was a man in the hallway wearing a white coat and I said to Jeff, “Honey, I think that guy is my labor nurse.” He assured me the man must be a doctor, because in 1990, there were no male labor nurses to speak of. I kept insisting, and finally the man came into my room and introduced himself. It turned out that he was one of only two male labor nurses in all of Fresno County. When he left, I said to my surprised husband, “I told you!” I must say, that guy turned out to be the best, most compassionate labor nurse I have ever had-no joke.
Pleasantly delivered of a healthy baby boy, who we named David Scott Lee, my body resumed its good health, but because he was delivered three weeks early, David had some difficulty with suckling. He would either drink the breast milk or breathe, but not both at the same time, which was a necessarily important skill for a baby. His pediatrician wanted to keep him for observation in the hospital nursery, but because we did not have medical insurance at the time, I checked myself out, and came to the hospital just for feedings.
The next day, as I was rocking David, a nurse grabbed him from me, saying that some tests came back from the lab, that he was seriously ill and needed to go immediately to the pediatric ICU. I followed her, but got on the cell phone to my out-of-town husband, so he could find out what happened, because there was a frenzied atmosphere all around me in the hospital, that just came over me like a tidal wave. Nurses were swirling around and the worst of it was that they took David through a doorway that they refused me entrance to. I could hear a bloodcurdling scream coming from the other side of the door that I knew was my baby, though I had only held him in my arms for a single day. There are some things that you do not need to tell a mother about her own child, and believe me, that is one of them.
The whole experience at the hospital felt like a tornado. I don’t exactly remember which thing happened in what order, but Jeff was trying to call to tell me they accidentally got our baby mixed up with someone else’s, though the phones wouldn’t work, because the hospital was doing fire drills all day. At the same time, my Mom was driving to the hospital to be with me, knowing that something had gone terribly wrong, but she couldn’t get to me, since the elevators were inoperable due to the fire drills. By the time the internal hospital phones were working, David had been behind the ICU door screaming for 45 minutes. Nurses had tried six different IV sites on his body, but were thankfully unsuccessful, since starting an IV would have meant administering unnecessary medicine in his body. When my mother finally appeared, all she could see was David’s little limp sleeping body in my arms. She concluded that he had died before she could arrive.
I know that it sounds like this story is getting worse and not better, but life can seem chaotic like that sometimes. Nevertheless, David was protected through the turmoil and afterward we went home to watch him grow. This was when I witnessed God answer my prayer so beautifully and completely, for David was innately given what my family calls, the ‘Happy Gene’. We began to notice right away, that he was an unusually contented baby, and that his joyous disposition was contagious. David always had a way of bringing out the happiness in people wherever we would go. Even my father, who was introverted, would become animated when I would come to the door and he’d ask, “Where’s Davey?” Then he’d let my son take the pens out of his pocket-protector and climb all over him. Those were things my dad had never done before with any other child.
Once when David was a toddler and it was quite stormy in our mountain community, I felt I needed to take him to a doctor because I was sure there was something wrong. He seemed fussy to me. The medical staff sternly scolded me for bringing a baby out in such weather, since David seemed delightfully happy to them, until the doctor looked in his ears, which were so infected that they had both painfully ruptured. He was shocked.
Growing up with David as my son has been an adventure and a privilege. He has been a treasure that I never expected and I have learned an important life lesson from the little babe over whose prenatal existence I prayed that hopeful prayer almost 20 years ago. People like David have a secret. They are naturally able to live within the current day’s grace. They do not pull yesterday’s disappointments into today with their regrets. They do not anticipate tomorrow’s worries and drag them into today with their anxieties. They enjoy every day for its own sake. Anyone, with much effort, can learn to cultivate this ‘Happy Gene’, but David is one of the blessed few that God creates and gives to the world as a present, as if to say, “I give you this joy-filled person in your life, because I love you.”
And so it goes with David. He is 19 years old today and still has the ‘Happy Gene’. A few months ago, I was in a doctor’s waiting room reading a Time magazine, about new research on children. Apparently there is evidence that some, although a precious few are born with a predisposition for a joyous temperament like David’s. Finally, empirical scientific proof that God has given me an answer to my original prayer, far better than I could have expected-a ‘Happy Gene’ for David. I knew I would not be disappointed in the end.
“Be ye glad and rejoice forever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a JOY.” Isaiah 65:18
