I’m CSPC member Lauren Balmer, and this is how I’m living deeply.
“Jacob and I didn’t have trouble getting pregnant- STAYING pregnant was the hard part. After getting married, we waited about six years before deciding to bring a child into the mix, and pregnancy came quickly. But at 15 weeks, I experienced something we never expected. I was working in South Carolina at my company’s headquarters and started feeling pain on my side. It got progressively worse over a few days, but I ignored it, chalking it up to typical pregnancy discomfort. Eventually, the pain became so severe I could barely breathe. After a few phone calls weighing the pros and cons, I decided to seek medical care in Knoxville, closer to the comforts of home. But I couldn’t drive myself back, so I called my parents, who lived nearby. I told my mom I could make it from work to her house, but not any further. Meanwhile, Jacob, who works at UT Medical Center, started driving down from Knoxville. We met at roughly a halfway point -an Ingles parking lot- where mom handed me off to Jacob. The drive was brutal, and we headed straight to the ER at UT. Jacob, a surgery resident, was calm. He was convinced it was just my gallbladder. I wasn’t overly worried either. Maybe it was ignorance, but I felt like we were going to be fine. However, tests quickly ruled out the gallbladder- and appendicitis, too. Without a clear-cut answer to my excruciating pain, the doctors did an ultrasound of my abdomen and discovered a large mass. That’s what was causing all the pain. Next, a CT scan to determine what the mass was. I had a spontaneous adrenal hemorrhage- a blood vessel near my adrenal gland had burst, causing internal bleeding. Loaded up on medicine to manage the pain, I spent the night in the hospital for observation. Thankfully, the bleeding stopped on its own. They sent me home with pain meds and instructions to wait for the clot, which was bigger than a softball, to reabsorb. I joked that for a while, I had two things growing inside me: our baby and ‘the blob,’ as I called it. It was rare -one in a million – but at least the baby was doing fine.
After the hemorrhage at 15 weeks, I had to slow down. I wasn’t big and uncomfortable yet, so until that point, I’d been running at my normal pace: working, exercising, traveling- life as usual. But my recovery from the hemorrhage was slow. We had very few answers about what caused it, and I was in pain for weeks, which forced me to stop, sit, and just be. That was hard- not my personality. Looking back, this season was God preparing me for what was to come. It was the first sign that this journey wasn’t going to be straightforward or easy. At 29 weeks pregnant -two weeks before Christmas last year- I went into labor. And of course, it happened while Jacob was on a 24-hour shift at the hospital! I had always said that I’d end up driving myself to the hospital while he was working. Well, I wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t quite play out as I’d imagined. The night before, my mother-in-law had been visiting Gatlinburg, so she and her cousin were using our house as a stopover. It was a rainy, gray Saturday, and I’d spent the whole day lounging on the couch with our dog Hazel. I went to bed early, but Hazel kept getting up during the night. Every hour, on the hour, she’d get out of bed and walk to the front door, looking at me and then back at the door. It was strange behavior for her, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. Around 2 a.m., Hazel woke me again, and I decided to get up and go to the bathroom. That was when I saw a little bit of bleeding- a really tiny amount, so I wasn’t too concerned. I called Jacob, who was at work, and downplayed it. ‘Do I really have to come in?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘You’re pregnant and bleeding. You need to come in.’ I still wasn’t alarmed, but I agreed. I thought I could just put the dog up and drive myself to the hospital. Jacob, though, insisted I wake up his mom and have her drive me in. Begrudgingly, I went and woke her up, feeling bad for freaking her out. In my mind, this was just a minor inconvenience. But it was actually the beginning of something much bigger.
During the drive to the hospital, the bleeding picked up significantly. Having my mother-in-law drive me and drop me at the curb was the right call. From the moment I arrived, it was touch and go. They checked and, sure enough, I was in labor- a few centimeters dilated and contracting. The two goals became to slow the labor and stop the bleeding, basically Operation Keep Baby In. They determined I was experiencing a placental abruption, where the placenta begins to pull away from the uterine wall. In some cases, this occurs gradually, still allowing the baby to receive enough nutrients and oxygen for many weeks until birth much closer to term. But in others, the separation happens more rapidly and more completely, putting both mother and child in extreme danger. The latter scenario was my reality. (We later learned my placenta had abrupted by 80%.) There’s no way to know exactly when things began to deteriorate – whether it had happened quickly or if it had been a slow progression over the week prior. What they did know was that I lost half the blood in my body by the time it was all over. Thankfully, I never needed a transfusion, but I came close. I was loaded up on other medications, though. Several to try to slow contractions and stop the bleeding, plus steroid shots to more rapidly develop baby boy’s lungs and neurological functions. The goal was two rounds of shots over 48 hours. The medications they gave me to slow things down seemed to help and we thought things were under control at one point. They even moved me off the labor & delivery floor and we were coming to terms with six weeks of bedrest in the hospital. But then, just a few hours after being moved off the L&D floor, I started bleeding again. They rushed me back down to labor & delivery and found I was seven centimeters dilated. I’d gone in early Sunday morning, now it was early Tuesday morning, and it was go time. The doctors moved fast to prepare me for delivery. They expedited another batch of medications to give baby his best chance and, despite all the complications, I was able to get an epidural. Even that, though, had its challenges and took several attempts.
David entered the world at just shy of three pounds, dropping to two pounds, 9 ounces in the days after his birth- a tiny bundle, fragile but full of fight. His birth did not come without its heart wrenching moments. The NICU team had prepared us for the worst- saying he’d come out blue and lifeless, wouldn’t cry, and would be whisked away immediately. So, I was bracing myself for all of that. But in a surprising moment of grace, David came out and gave us a loud cry! He was a little blue, but that cry was everything to us. He was strong enough that they let him stay on my chest for a few moments before they took him to the NICU. To Jacob and me, those few precious moments with David felt like a gift- something we didn’t expect in such a critical and urgent delivery. Soon, though, they had to intubate and rush David away, just as we’d anticipated. That part is a bit fuzzy for me- I was still on a magnesium drip, which makes you very out of it. There are gaps in my memory and I don’t remember much from that point. But miraculously, David had no major complications in those first critical days. He was extubated and moved to more comfortable, less invasive respiratory support quickly. He was free from brain bleeds or other signs of trauma from his emergent birth. And, despite his need for IV nutrition to start, then an NG tube for months, he tolerated feedings well. It was as if God wrapped him in a layer of protection. However, there were still significant hurdles to face. His and our NICU journey had only just begun. We’d soon experience the heartbreak of leaving the hospital after delivery without our baby, celebrating our first Christmas as a family in a cold, sterile hospital, and many other difficult moments we’d never expected to face. But in the immediate aftermath of David’s delivery, we were able to breathe a sigh of relief. That gracious gift, like our whole story, reveals the goodness of God. He’s always there blessing us, of course. But sometimes there are moments in life’s hardest seasons that help us stop, see, and feel His goodness so clearly and strongly. Jacob and I really felt our need of Him, and God was so good to meet us there.
When the day finally came for us to take David home, it was nothing short of nerve-wracking. He had been in the NICU for over two months (67 days, to be exact), and David had progressed so much. Everything seemed on track for his discharge, but preemies have a way of keeping you on your toes. Just when we thought it was a sure thing, on the day we were supposed to finally bring him home, his blood pressure spiked. Suddenly, the uncertainty was back. Preemies are prone to blood pressure issues. Often those are tied to their renal arteries rather than their heart, so David needed an MRI on his kidneys. It was the final in a long series of hurdles to bringing our baby home, and those moments of waiting were agonizing. As with so many parts of our story, things were not going according to ‘the plan.’ All day, we oscillated between hope and doubt: Will today finally be the day? Will we leave with him, or will we wait longer? Finally, the doctor on call recognized that Jacob’s medical background made us well-prepared to monitor David at home. So, at the very last minute, we got the green light. I can’t even begin to describe the emotional roller coaster of that day. You picture this moment being pure joy, right? But for us, it was marked by anxiety up until the very last minute. We left the hospital at 7:00 on a Friday night, which is an exhausting time to bring home a fragile baby. There was no longer a team of professionals standing by. Suddenly, it was just us- a mom and dad with a tiny baby to care for on our own. David had grown to just shy of six pounds, but he still seemed so delicate.
Our first night at home was a crash course in parenthood. After 67 days of 24/7 NICU care, we were suddenly on our own with a fragile little one, learning on the fly. But we were so grateful. The weight of the previous weeks didn’t vanish, but it felt lighter now that David was home. I had taken four weeks off for my own recovery after delivery, but during most of David’s NICU stay, I was back at work part-time. Jacob had returned to his residency full-time (we joked that David knew the only way he’d get time with his dad was by spending his first two months at his workplace!). But once David came home, Jacob took paternity leave. He became a full-time dad for the first three weeks while I ramped up my work schedule again. After that, I took the rest of my maternity leave through late May. Our start to parenthood was far from typical, but God’s hand was in every moment. Spiritually, this entire experience has been a lesson in surrender. I’m a planner, and there’s nothing like having your plans totally disrupted over and over again to remind you how little control you really have. We learned a lot about waiting- about how to sit with uncertainty, trusting that God is still good even when things seem out of control. And even in the hardest moments, we could feel His goodness. David’s health might not have been in our hands, but God’s hand was always on him. He came through every complication and risk unscathed. We have emotional scars, sure, but we’ve also seen firsthand how God shows up in those dark places. Throughout this journey, we’ve been held up by the incredible people God has placed around us. That includes friends, family, and my CSPC Cultivate group, through which God connected me to my mentor, Bisha Harrington. Bisha also delivered her youngest son at around 29 weeks, so she could speak the NICU language and empathize with my experience deeply. It’s in circumstantial kindnesses like this that we’ve seen God’s care most clearly. He gave us exactly what we needed, when we needed it. In all of it, we are reminded again and again: God is good, and He’s got us in His hand.”