Miracles Never Cease

This is Jonas. He is two weeks old. 



In his short life he has already had two life-saving miracles.

This is the first one - a true knot in the umbilical cord which could have tightened and killed him at any time.

And this is the second one - a 1 inch wood screw that passed through his digestive tract.

It was around 11:30 on Friday night. We were gearing ourselves up for the long, sleepless, newborn night we knew lay ahead. I dished myself up a bowl of ice cream and listened to Jonas cry in the baby swing, knowing he had a messy diaper I needed to change.

I laid Jonas on a changing mat out on our family room couch and proceeded to change his diaper. I wiped his bottom all around and saw a little grey spot up in his crack that looked like a small pebble or something. That's weird, I thought. I tried to pick it up through the baby wipe, but was unsuccessful. The lights were down low, so it was kind of hard to see everything.  Suddenly Jonas started to squirt out more poop so I quickly covered him up with the wipe and then looked and saw that the little grey spot in his anus had gotten bigger. I caught hold of it with the wipe and pulled as Jonas pushed. What was I looking at?! A screw?! Why was there a screw in my hand? I was horrified.

How did a screw come out of my 2-week-old?!

I knelt beside the couch and started to cry. I was in the Twilight Zone. This screw was not supposed to be in my newborn!
 
My mind started racing...
I'm the worst mom ever!
Why does my breast milk turn into sharp screws?
Is he some kind of robot? (Remember its late and I'm working on days of very little sleep)
There's no way he could have swallowed something like that! He doesn't even know anything about solid foods.
There's no way he could have put it in his own mouth.
I'd almost rather think the screw was shoved up his bottom, instead of traveling dangerously all the way through Jonas' little body. But I never the leave Jonas out naked (that's just asking for trouble). So, that would have required the culprit to undo the diaper and then redo it. Plus my kids don't really even know about the anus hole.
Maybe the screw was just put in his diaper. But it was really way up inside of him, head first.   

Brian came in from the other room, looked at me and knew something was terribly wrong. 
I said, "Look what just came out of Jonas." He was stunned.
Maybe we should have rushed him to hospital, but we honestly spent the rest of the night trying to figure out what had just happened. 

Nothing about it makes sense. 

Jonas hadn't really been extra fussy. At least not that we knew of. He's a newborn so he cries anyway, nothing seemed different from all the other newborns I'd taken care of. There wasn't any coughing or gagging. I do remember a couple of little shrieks sometime during his little life, but I just assumed it was from his circumcision area. Who knows now.

The screw came from the rocking chair in the nursery that broke just before Jonas was born. I had slid the fallen screws under the chair until we had time to fix it.

We think Cody is the little guy that did it. I talked to all the kids individually the next morning explaining to them what had happened and asking if they had any clues as to how it happened. The older three kids were extremely concerned and knew immediately how dangerous the situation was. Cody doesn't communicate very well and when he saw the screw he just got excited and grabbed it...

Although he is extremely loving with hugs and kisses and wanting to hold the baby, there have been a couple of times when we have found him sitting inside the crib next to Jonas while he is sleeping. I would quickly just get him down and out of the room, but I never thought to look for screws in the baby's mouth before I left. (Jonas' room is now toddler-proofed).

We moved Jonas out of our bedroom and into the nursery on Wednesday, so the best we can figure is that sometime between Wednesday and Friday the screw was swallowed.

Saturday morning Brian took Jonas to the pediatrician. He showed them the screw and related the story. They had never seen anything like it! Just by the way the screw had to be pushed out so deliberately the doctor said that it was obvious Jonas had swallowed it. As a precaution Jonas was given an x-ray (which was clear) and we were told what to look for with GI bleeds and fevers.

There hasn't been any bleeding or fever. It really is a miracle.

I still can't wrap my head around it. I keep envisioning the path the of the screw through such a tiny body. How would it even fit? What kind of scraping was there? How did he not choke? I just don't like to think about it. But I know he was being watched over by some special guardian angels and a loving Heavenly Father. I am so grateful that we were blessed to have these miracles happen when we didn't even know we needed them.

I've been pretty traumatized with changing Jonas' diapers. Now I keep waiting for a razor blade to appear! Hopefully Jonas has more than nine lives, because at this rate, he's going to need them. Some people have said Jonas must be meant for great things, and that's a really nice thing to think about.