Beating the odds - a miracle or the result of positive action?

What I am about to share is very personal to me but as it was 4 years ago yesterday a little miracle happened I feel I need to share.

December 2010 I was living in the Philippines with my fiance who was 5 weeks pregnant with our first and only child.

My fiance became very ill and got worse by the day - to the point she ended up in hospital with suspected denge fever. Her situation got worse by the hour and her fever was going through the roof. It wasn't looking good.

Now this particular hospital, like so many there, was so woefully underfunded that their stocks of medicines were all but non existent. At 8.30 on a sunday night I was given a list of medications needed and told to go and find them! I spent the next 2 hours running all over the city( a city I had very little knowledge of) tring to find pharmacies that were still open and had what we needed. I had to make it happen, I had no choice....I succeeded.

A number of blood tests were undertaken and it was soon revealed she didn't have denge fever but had in fact contracted German measles....not good news at all for our unborn child. We were informed there was up to a 95% chance our child would not survive or if it did it would not be perfect. We were devestated.

Was anything we did going to make any difference...we didn't know. Finding specialists was not an easy task where we were living and we didn't even know who or what to look for.

Finally we were given the name of an obstetrician in Cebu city. For us this meant a 3 hour ferry ride from where we lived and an overnight stay in the city before we could get a return ferry the next day. This we did every few weeks. Scans and ultrasounds were regular and everything seemed to be taking shape just fine physically...brain development was unknown.

Eventually we had to move to the city to live as the ferry would not carry pregnant woman past 7 months.

At 7 months an ultrasound showed abnormalities with top lip development...it appeared as though it was a cleft palate. Again devistated as we had been doing so well. We left our obstetricians surgery in silence.

It was quite possibly the toughest mental time of my life. I was battling in my mind. How could I stay opptimistic? What difference would my mental attitude make to the outcome? and so on. I did something I don't do....I cried. Not in front of my fiance - she didn't need that. She needed me to be strong. I cried for my fiance, I cried for our unborn child and all the challenges she would have to face in life....all the challenges I thought she would have to face.

After a couple of days of self pitty and confusion I made some decisions. No matter what may happen in the coming weeks and months we were going to have a daughter and I will love her with all my heart...no matter what! I will do everything in my power to ensure she gets whatever she needs medically and I will go to the ends of the earth to ensure she is happy. I realised things happen in life we have no controll over but what we do have is the ability to controll how we react to those situations and use them to gain experience and grow stronger.

I made plans. I met with the administrator of the hospital we had chosen for the birth of our child. We made a back up plan...just in case!

I sharpened up my attitude and started believing...trully believing it was all going to work out ok.

Another ultrasound. She's fine...no sign of any abnormalities.

The day finally came for the arrival of our child. At 1.09am a healthy baby girl arrived on this earth. She was perfect. My fiance was exhausted so they rolled her away to rest and took my little girl off to get cleaned up. I went downstairs and outside the hospital and just stared into space. I was in awe.

Seven and a half months. Thats how long I had been continually told by the proffessionals to prepare for the worst. Thats how long I had to try and believe we would beat the odds. Thats how long we had to hold that secret from family and friends because we didn't need another person trying to give us "pep" talks.

Yesterday we celebrated her 4th birthday. We celebrated the fact we have living with us a constant reminder that the odds can be beaten even when heavily stacked against you.

We need to stay strong in the face of adversity and not lose our faith...no matter what. We will always have challenges...its how we deal with these on a mental level that can make all the difference.

To your everlasting success

Steve