Happy Birthday Nathan
Nathan is ONE YEAR OLD! We still can't believe how far he has come. One of the many ways we chose to celebrate today was by having Nathan baptized. We could not think of a better way to express the great gift God gave us in our son. Here is the story we shared with our church, family and friends at Nathan's baptism:
Nathan was due April 29, 2011. Imagine our surprise when on February 11th, eleven weeks early, Katie’s water broke. Four hours later, at 12:32am on February 12th, we held our son for a few short minutes before he was whisked off to the NICU. In those first few days as we began telling and retelling his birth story, we were amazed at the way God had been present: our midwife was the one on call that night; the OB they sent us to at Beth Israel specialized in preterm labor; Nathan was born breathing on his own; everything went so quickly, we didn’t have time to panic.
For two weeks we told everyone that “aside from being early, Nathan is a really healthy kid”. And then we were challenged again. Nathan was diagnosed with a clot in his heart and a blood infection. He was transferred to Children’s Hospital. Because the clot itself was infected, the infection could not be cleared with antibiotics; bypass heart surgery to remove the clot had a 70% mortality rate; the infection, if left to run its course, would be terminal. We prayed for Nathan’s doctors and we prayed for a miracle. For five days we slept at the hospital as Nathan went through a high risk medical procedure and then was given a high risk medication. And when the risks became too high, we were told the only thing left to do was wait until Nathan was old enough for surgery.
With two weeks of waiting ahead of us, we went home, too exhausted to even be scared any more. That night we got a call from the NICU – the clot was 60% smaller! Nathan’s doctors called it a miracle; God had answered our prayers. Nathan would not need bypass surgery, the infection would clear, we got to keep our son.
That night we were reminded of what Nathan’s name means:
Nathan – God has Given; Timothy – Praising God.
Our prayer for Nathan is that he will grow up knowing that God’s hand was on him from the beginning. We pray that his life will be an example of the power of God and that he will live his life praising God. We want to encourage Nathan’s faith and model for him how to live in faith, and we know we cannot do this alone. We will need you, our family and friends, our church community, to support us as well as Nathan. We will need role models for godly parenting and Nathan will need friends and teachers to share with him the love of God. God has given us so many blessings this past year, and we celebrate that today — Nathan’s first birthday —as he is baptized.