“As if he was telling us ‘I’m okay!!! Don’t give up on me!,’” the incredible story of a baby born at 25 weeks who is doing fine
By Dave Andrusko
Ward Miles in his 10th day of life.
The setting for the story that appeared on Huffington Post was the surprise video Ben Miller made for his wife, Lyndsey Miller, on her 32nd birthday. “I had tricked her into thinking I was working on other projects late into the night,” her husband Ben told the Huffington Post. “I called her back to my office and as soon as she saw Ward on the screen she knew I had been working on something for her and she started crying.”
Making it more perfect is that her birthday coincided with the one-year-anniversary of the day Ward came home from the hospital.
And Ward had really been up against it. Lyndsey, only 25 weeks along, experienced cramps. Turns out she was in labor and four hours after her doctor sent her to the hospital, Ward was born.
It was not until ten days passed that doctors did their first brain scan, according to the Huffington Post’s Farah L. Miller. There are four grades—with four being the worst. Ward scored 2 on one side of his brain and four on the other.
“We were devastated,” Ben told Miller. “The bleeds could lead to severe problems down the road. And we couldn’t do anything to fix it. The doctors couldn’t do anything to fix it. It was a horrible feeling. All we could do was pray.”
One can only imagine just how devastated the couple was. Yet the very night they received the terrible news, Ben wrote this in his journal.
“At the 6:00 care time, we were
holding his hand, looking at him, talking to him. His CPAP mask was off,
and his feeding tube was out as well. He was feeling good since he
didn’t have any of that on. While we were watching him, he turned his
little head towards us, and then opened his eyes. We know he can’t see
at this stage, but the fact that he opened them, and opened them so wide
we had not seen before. He stared right at us. He held our gaze. Just
looked right at us. Didn’t blink. I had enough time to get a photo of
it. After a little while he shut his little eyes and turned his head
back to the ceiling. I will never forget that moment. I feel as if he
was telling us ‘I’m okay!!! Don’t give up on me!”
Miller’s story concludes with an update on Ward, now 16 months, and
his considerable progress. Although he’s just learning to crawl, he’s
been trying to walk for months. “He has some words, including “dog” and
“Mc” (the name of one of the family dogs), though he is still working on
“puppy” and “Samson” (their other pet),” Miller writes. The story ends
delightfully:
“Ben jokes that Lyndsey has now
watched the video so many times, she might make up half of its hits on
Vimeo. But with over 250,000 views, and those numbers climbing, it’s
more likely that he has done something amazing for the world beyond
their little family.
“As one NICU nurse wrote of the film on Tumblr: ‘This is why I do what I do.’
“Bravo, Ben. Happy Birthday, Lyndsey. We’re cheering for you, Ward.”
You can watch Ben’s surprise video at www.youtube.com.Source: NRLC News
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