Since Levi was 4 weeks early, the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) team was present for Levi’s birth. As soon as Levi was born, they had the responsibility of checking him out. They poked and prodded him and then one doctor stood there for about 2 minutes contemplating whether to send Levi to the NICU or the regular nursery. Deep down, I was saying to myself, “please, please send him to the regular nursery.” But the doctor was cautious and due to Levi making some grunting noises when he breathed, he sent Levi to the NICU for overnight observations. As it turns out, that was a very fortunate decision – one that we will forever be thankful for.

Levi was making these little grunting noises when he inhaled, something that is not uncommon for preemies. Since his lungs weren’t completely developed, he was having to use extra stomach muscles to breath. No big deal – he would just have to stay in the NICU for a day or so until he stopped. Luckily, he had stopped by the next morning (Saturday). The only problem, though, was that he started doing something else most preemies do – he started having apnea spells. This is where he would stop breathing altogether for over 20 seconds. Apparently the signal from your brain that tells you to breathe isn’t fully developed sometimes until week 38 of the pregnancy. The doctors told us while it was a little unusual for a 36 weeker to do this, it was not all that unexpected. The only problem – Levi would have to stay in the NICU until he went 5 days without an apnea spell.

Jessica’s cousin is a neonatologist. She called us and told us all about apnea, how it’s treated, and what to expect. She also told us that sometimes they will do MRI scans of the baby’s brain to rule out any problems there that might be causing the apnea. So we mentioned this to Levi’s neonatologist and he agreed to do an MRI the next day. Everyone made a special effort to tell us not to expect the MRI to show anything abnormal and that the apnea was just due to Levi being 4 weeks early. Unfortunately,everyone was wrong. They did find something on the MRI.

We were initially told that they found an “abnormality” on the MRI. Translation: they didn’t know what it was. So a pediatric neurologist was called in to interpret the MRI. He looked at it and told us that Levi had a stroke sometime during the pregnancy – probably about 6 weeks before. He showed us the pictures of the small part of his brain that was affected and told us that luckily, it was in a “relatively quite part of the brain.” He said that Levi looks and acts normal now, and that there is a good chance he will never have any affects from the stroke. He also said that it may be 5-10 years down the road before we see any affects. He reassured us by telling us that baby brains are very amazing in that they have the ability to re-wire themselves. We hope and pray that Levi will develop normally and never have any major problems. We’re very optimistic and are just so happy to have little Levi with us.
So that leads me back to that decision by the delivery room doctor to send Levi to the NICU instead of the nursery. God’s hand was definitely in that decision. If the doctor had sent Levi to the normal nursery like we were wanting, he wouldn’t have had the monitors on him when he had his apnea spells like he did in the NICU. He could have been in our room when that happened and we would not have recognized it. And he definitely would not have had the MRI to tell us about his stroke. But God was watching over us and Levi. We are so thankful for all of these blessings. God is so awesome!

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