Our son, Toby, was born on April, 21, 1980, and we almost lost him two days later.
Back then, OB ward accommodations for mothers and newborns were a lot different than they are today. The babies were only allowed in the mother’s room at feeding time. They stayed in the nursery the rest of the time, and feeding times were strictly adhered to. So if babies got hungry in between scheduled feeding times, the staff let them cry until mother could come for them.
The middle-of-the-night feeding time was at 2:00 am, and a nurse roused me to go to the nursery to get my son. The morning he was to be discharged from the hospital, I overslept and woke up on my own at 2:30. My first thought was that the staff failed to wake me and my son needed fed, so I dragged myself out of bed and headed down the hall to the nursery to get him. As I was passing the nurse’s station, a nurse said to me, “Mrs. Strebe, we’re taking care of your baby this morning. You can go back to bed. ” I responded, “Okay.” I promptly returned to my room; but then I lay awake in bed wondering why they were taking care of my baby.
Around 6:30, the pediatrician paid me a visit with some paperwork requiring my signature. He wanted permission to run tests and do a spinal tap on my son. Apparently, while performing a routine examination to prepare Toby for discharge, a nurse discovered that he was running a fever of 101. And they’d been running tests all night, trying to find out what was going on with this seven-pound newborn. By the time they asked me for a signature, they’d likely already done the spinal tap. Regardless, they were so calm that I had no idea of the seriousness of it. I knew nothing about babies. The nurse explained that my son was running a fever, and they were looking for the cause, but no one told me that he could die from it. I mean, who dies from a low-grade fever? Newborn babies, and to an infant, 101 is high. But I didn’t realize that.
Well, Floyd worked third shift, so he got off work around 8:00 a.m., and because we lived a 90 minute drive from the hospital, he stayed at the home of some friends, cutting his driving time in half. He got some sleep at their house before heading to the hospital. Toby and I were supposed to be discharged that day.
Meanwhile, the hospital contacted his duty section at Alconbury Air Force Base to inform him that his son was in critical condition. But he’d already left work, so they tried calling our house. When they couldn’t reach him, a friend of mine, who worked in the Alconbury communications squadron, contacted the hospital to talk to me. He told me that he learned that Toby was in critical condition and wanted to find out how he was doing. My son was in critical condition? That was news to me. I still didn’t comprehend how serious a fever was for a newborn. And Floyd didn’t find out until he reached the hospital.
Not knowing what caused the baby to develop a fever, the nursing staff promptly isolated him from the other newborns. Because he was isolated, a nurse took care of him. I wasn’t permitted to see him or feed him. I missed four feedings, which is torture to a nursing mother. Floyd finally asked the hospital when I’d be able to nurse him. Nothing was definite. No one would tell me when I could resume nursing my newborn, so Floyd told them that he was taking me home and we would be back in a week to pick up the baby when they released him.
They didn’t want me to leave, so they let me go back to nursing him. However, I had to feed him in the nursery because they kept him isolated from the other infants. And because his hospital stay had been extended, I now fed him when he was hungry, not at a certain time. Since I was only there to take care of my son, I was permitted to leave the hospital whenever I wanted. Everything revolved around Toby’s schedule. After he was fed, I knew I had three hours before I had to be back for his next feeding. One afternoon, Floyd and I went to the movies with a British friend.
Toby was in the hospital for ten days. All the while, God had things under control. I trusted Him and never worried about my son; not even when I learned that the baby was considered critical. You see, Hebrews 9:27 says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.” Everyone has an appointment with death. Some have that appointment at a very young age.
Toby is now 32 years old, married with three little girls of his own. He’s in the United States Army, currently stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. God chose not to take him in infancy. He has a great plan for Toby’s life.