Harrison, Sarah

I had an "ideal" pregnancy, complete with routine ultrasounds, all assuring me I had a healthy child on the way. How they could fail to see that Sarah’s intestines were up in her left lung cavity where her lung should have been is beyond me. The world came crashing down when I went into premature labor 3 weeks early and the fetal heart monitor recorded that each time I had a contraction, her heart rate would cut in half. The doctors immediately surmised that she wasn’t getting enough oxygen and began prepping me for a C-section. I was so scared. I told them they couldn't do one because I hadn't read that chapter in the book yet! Ridiculous, huh? Of course we proceeded with the C-section. When Sarah was born I remember waiting to hear her cry that would let me know she had arrived. That sound never came. Within seconds she was surrounded by specialists and whisked away. I kept asking, "Is she dead?" The doctor had managed to say, "It’s a girl". As I was being stitched up, I was told that "you have a very sick baby". The recover room can be a place of despair when left alone with no information and only your own imagination running wild. Two hours later, barely hanging on to my sanity, my husband came in, weeping uncontrollably, and told me that she had a Diaphragmatic Hernia and they were going to fly her to the University of Tennessee Medical Center. I had never even seen her! About then, the doctor came and explained what the condition was and that I could see her briefly before the Life Star team took her. I will never, ever forget his next words to me He said, "Karen, take a good look, you will probably never see her alive again". Could it truly be that the child we had prayed for would come into our lives only to be taken so quickly? She was so tiny and I know all the tubes and equipment she was hooked to weighed more than her, but to me she looked like an angel. I stroked her cheek and a moment later they took her. My arms ached to hold her and I felt so empty. Just then, a member of the Life Star team came back and handed me a Polaroid picture of her. He said, "I know you can’t hold her, but you can hold onto this". That is still my favorite picture. So much happened in the following days that there is no way I can recount it all unless I write a book. But quickly let me say that although it was uncertain whether Sarah would live at first, she made it through surgery and was weaned off the ventilator in 9 days, which is miraculous. During those days I wanted to help her all I could. There wasn’t much I could do, but giving her my breast milk was something I was committed to. I knew that she would need the nutrients from it. So I pumped and pumped. Was it easy? Never. I would hold her picture (tubes and all), and cry and pray, and pump. The hospital froze it until she was able to have it. It made me feel like I was "making up" to her for "allowing" her life to begin this way. Although the doctors assured me that there was nothing I did to cause this, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. For new parents out there: please realize that those feelings are normal and unfounded. The good news is that they passed, and were replaced by many other feelings that come and go at random, even now, after 5 years. As I write this, my daughter Sarah, is doing her best to clean out my cupboards, rearrange the bookshelves, and drag out every toy she owns. And what do I say to that? "Good girl, Sara". It tickles me pink to see her able to do things that we never dreamed she would live to do. (Sarah was born with a left-sided CDH, Trisomy 14-Partial, Agenesis of Corpus Collusum, and enlarged kidneys on 8/13/90)



Written by Sarah's mom, Karen Harrison (Tennessee)
1996