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Just by looking at her, you wouldn't know she was having trouble getting her food.....you see, Jimma's tongue fell to the back of her throat ... thus making her suck unproductive. This beautiful baby with almond-shaped blue eyes was about to introduce her grandmama to a whole new world. My seventh grandchild was getting ready to come home with me while her mom, my then youngest daughter, would recouperate from the emergency c-section. This is the way we had done it with her older brother, Elisha and older sister, Victoria. It seemed like a viable plan!!!!
So we spent those first days in the hospital falling desparately in love with this seventh grandchild.......As I was holding her on that first day, I heard a familiar and o' so gentle voice prodding me......"Get to know her---watch her closely----really get to know her".......I felt such an urgency!!!!!.....such an overwhelming urgency not to miss anything!!!... soo.....For the next 48 hours, I watched her every movement....studied her every sound....her eyes seemed to speak to me .. of pain .. confusion .. and finally...trust. I had never experienced this so strongly prevalent in a newborn before!!! It was so hard for me to understand..not having the ability to foresee what was ahead. All I know is that by the time we were packing up to bring our new family member home, Jimma and I already had a connection that couldn't be compared to any other. It was as though we spoke without words....and o' my!!!!!!!.......how that proved to be truly 'life or death'!!!!.......this need to understand one another.......
Jimma had to have a 'biliblanket' brought out to the house....a nurse came out to monitor her progress. The morning of her fifth day, I couldn't get her to take any of her 2am feeding ....again that familiar voice gently spoke, ' drop sugar water into her mouth'.....her temperature wouldn't stay up..it was necessary to heat her blankets in the microwave to keep her body warm......but this morning, something was so wrong.....the young nurse thought she was just acting like a normal 'preemie'......but I knew....something was very wrong. I asked her to please call the doctor..just to humor an old grandma...please.......
At the doctor's office.........No time for an ambulance!! No time to get her to Charlotte......Quickly take her to Frye, he said, don't take time to stop by the house to pick anything up!!!.....The doctors would be ready for her when we arrived!!.........and what a dreadful trip it was!!!!! I sat in the back seat ... praying .. holding her close .. begging for her life...........Then we arrived.........
As the nurse took my baby from my arms.....my heart seemed to faint inside my chest.....her body was so limber.....the doctor began prodding her.....needles in her arms....needles in her head...and no response from her......So many questions.. and the answers ..a few at least.. were far down the road..... But for now, the doctor said the sugar water had sustained her life thus far...............see what God can do?
