Ephraim Makes His Arrival

 After making it to the hospital last night we had to run through a seemingly endless loop of doctors clarifying the plan for delivery.  To complicate things, the night docs were finishing a week of rotations at 7 am and were being replaced by the daytime docs.  Clarifying and confirming the procedure for delivery took a few hours.

After we had a plan, we tapped Ephraim's bladder once again to compress his unique and extremely large bladder.  The doctors removed 1100 milliliters from him in preparation for his delivery.  After a long prep period we entered the operating room and Ephraim Ross McCann was delivered at 12:03 pm on August 18, 2014 weighing 9 lbs and 4 ounces.  He was immediately rushed to respiratory therapy where he was intubated. 

After less than an hour, the NICU docs came to our room with very long faces and told us what we were so afraid and yet so prepared to hear.  No matter the amount of oxygen, Ephraim's lungs were not developed to absorb and process oxygen.  The enormous bladder and stomach from the distended abdomen had crowded out the lungs and left them with no room to develop.  As we invited our family and friends to our room to meet our newest son we knew our time with him was limited.  Finally we gathered  to pray over Ephraim and thank God for his short but fruitful life.  As we were praying around 3:25 pm his heart stopped beating and his spirit left his body.  Our beautiful baby boy we just welcomed into the world left in just more than three hours.

The saddness of this situation is oppressive.  Our hearts are very heavy even though this is what we expected to happen.  No matter how many times we heard the "poor" prognosis, we seemed to remind ourselves of an anecdotal story of a bladder outlet obstruction gone right.  Hope is interesting.  No matter how bad we knew the situation was and how bleak the odds looked, we had a way of keeping the door to good results open.  We had to keep the door open.  It's the only way we could make it through this pregnancy.

And the outcome of this situation is overwhelming, but by no means the worst case scenario.  Megan and I had been praying that we would not need to make challenging ethical decisions that we would wonder about for years.  God answered these prayers.  No years of treatment or dozens of surgeries trying to repair a severely damaged body.  No experimental procedures, living in different cities trying to raise a family while one child receives specialized treatment.  No partial treatments and mediocre results while struggling to keep a marriage going.  God had grace on us.  We didn't have to choose between bad and worse.

While we didn't get the healthy baby we wanted we still believe Ephraim will live up to the meaning of his name, "fruitful".  His life has already touched many and caused us to connect in a powerful way to many others.  This has been an incredible burden to carry and you have helped us carry it, fulfilling the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2).  Months of meals, frequent lawn and garden care, cleaning our house, watching our children as we go to doctors' appointments and people praying for us from all corners of the globe are just a few ways our burden has been lightened.  Thank you for serving us.  Thank you for fulfilling the law of Christ.

In addition we have attempted to humble ourselves and ask for help from others, a pride killing act.  An act so pride killing and humbling that it has actually helped us to create community.  As you know, the healthy don't need a doctor and people who have "it" all together don't tend to be hungry for more community.  And maybe that was the greatest fruit of all.  Maybe God sent us Ephraim so we could experience more of Him through life-giving relationships honoring to God.  I'd say that's fruit.

How is Megan doing?

Probably about what you would expect.  Recovering from surgery, missing the boy she has been attached to for 35 weeks and dealing with a very long night and day of decisions has left her very tired.  But she is joyful to have the friends she has shared this journey with.

Ephraim was born on the birthday of my grandfather, Ross Sachs, and thought "Ross" was a fitting middle name.