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The Path to Cure: The Whole Art of Healing
by Allyson A. McQuinn
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 Jordan’s
Birth
My son, Jordan, was born seven weeks prematurely. After my water
broke at thirty-two weeks, I held onto him for another week as his
watery home leaked down my legs. From the numerous ultrasounds,
we could see that he was generating a pocket of amniotic fluid around
his mouth and he was effectively breathing it in and out of his
lungs. His heartbeat and movements were closely monitored twenty-four
hours a day. As I lay in bed listening for his little voice to tell
me what was to come next, I tapped out his heartbeat on the hard-covered
books I was reading. I was waiting for the rhythm of our one parallel
life to divide into two.
The Doctors, after telling me that my baby would weigh around four
and a half pounds at birth, administered steroid shots into my hip
to encourage his lung development. Their main concerns were his
size and ability to breathe effectively on his own. The Pediatrician,
specializing in premature births, said that the chances were excellent
that my baby would be a “fully operational model” and
the last four weeks in utero were solely about weight gain and putting
the finishing touches on lung development. I turned over on the
rubber mattress, listened to my baby’s heartbeat and waited.
On the fourth day in hospital, my husband wheeled me down to the
special care nursery so that we could meet a baby that was of similar
weight and development to ours. This is a foreign world known by
only a few. The nursing staff walked around calmly, monitoring alarms
that blared when a baby forgot to breathe. I was shocked beyond
belief to see a baby that was just over one pound. He looked more
like an organism from another planet than someone’s child.
He was hooked up to enough monitoring equipment that I’m sure
the wires alone weighed ten times what he did.
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