This birthday would be Annie’s best ever. This would be the birthday shortly followed by the birth of her first child. For over two years, Annie had longed to get pregnant, and now she awoke each day in awe of the coming arrival. Annie turned 24 on a Sunday, and the following Thursday was Thanksgiving Day. She had vowed to eat sparingly over that Thanksgiving meal, knowing that she needed to watch calories and reduce salt intake these last weeks before her due date, which was December 1st. However, at the evening Thanksgiving meal and the second family gathering of the day, Annie made up for what she skipped over lunch – not a good decision, as it turns out….
Satiated and comfy, Annie and James sat visiting with family when Baby announced he was coming, and he was early! Off to the hospital the excited couple raced. Twenty-four hours later, Baby Boy finally arrived.
Annie and James took their healthy, beautiful baby home on a cool yet sunny December day. Over the next couple of days, Annie, who wasn’t familiar with colic, couldn’t understand why her baby cried so much. Frustrated, she called the doctor, and he explained that Baby Boy was colicky. So, the doctor prescribed a medicine to take before each nursing. As it turned out, Annie was administering that medicine every two and a half hours.
Three weeks later, the baby had not regained his healthy birth weight. Frantically, Annie called her doctor again to explain that she had weighed him before nursing and again afterwards, and there was no change! The doctor immediately assumed she “had no milk,” an assumption that the mother knew wasn’t right. He told her to start the baby on a formula, and, reluctantly, she agreed, but only as a supplement to nursing.
Meanwhile, Annie continued to give Baby Boy the medication before each feeding. And he was still waking just as often. Then, one night, the baby slept straight through, twelve hours! Annie was sitting at the kitchen bar, perplexed as to why her baby had slept all night, when she suddenly realized that she had to go wake him up! She realized that it was the medication! There were no words spoken aloud; rather, it was a revelation by God that she had to wake up her baby and she should stop the medication. This revelation saved her baby’s life.
Annie ran into Baby Boy’s room and woke him up and never gave him any more colic medicine. Within a week, he had gained a pound, and she eliminated the supplement.
That medication the doctor had prescribed was paregoric. And, rather than a drop before each feeding – even that much would have been too much to administer so often – the doctor had prescribed a half teaspoon full! The baby was being drugged and was sleeping through his feedings. The doctor had almost killed Annie’s baby!
But God saved her baby. That eventful Thanksgiving and birthday week was followed by a blessed Christmas season with a once-again healthy baby who would grow up to love the Lord, an answer to a prayer Annie had prayed long before her child had ever been born. (…as related to this writer from the journal of a mother who chooses to remain anonymous)