That hole in my heart...and that hole in my heart

“I think you WILL have this baby today! Just try to make it after 10pm as I have tickets to the theater in Boston!"

With this news I gave my doctor a huge hug and cast a smug “I told you so” smile at the nurse who had minutes before insisted I make an appointment for the next week even though I told her I was in labor.

What followed was an amazingly fun day, considering I was about to have a baby in less than 9 hours. One that could only happen if you’d been on bedrest for 4 months and were determined to recapture some lost time. 

In the 2 weeks since being off bedrest, I, my husband and my 38 week belly had gone to the beach, gone baby stuff shopping, room decorating and just the day before on a walking visit of Boston.  Now that I had a precious few hours left, we went to the chiropractor and out for a Chinese food dinner. 

It wasn’t until I had to close my eyes and tell the waiter to “hold a sec” for my order as I breathed through a contraction that came every 5 minutes that I figured we might want to get home and get our things together. (I did finish my General Tsao’s chicken though. I had heard they didn’t feed you at the hospital if you were in labor and I was determined not to be hungry)!

Labor at the hospital was…relaxing and enjoyable. I kid you not. My husband and the nurse watched the Yankees play the Red Sox and I hung out in a Jacuzzi tub. My doctor whisked in (after our nurse had done all the work) at about 11:30 and at 11:58 I had a beautiful  baby boy in my arms.. He was bright eyed and pink and never uttered a sound except a gurgled greeting. He looked around (and I swear gave me a wink) and then put his head down with an “I got this, Mama” look on his face.

It was interesting to me that he didn’t cry. I thought all babies did. But I guess my boy was too cool to seem less than completely in charge of the situation. That “too cool for school” attitude remains even now.

It wasn’t until years later that I had a full understanding of the absolute miracle that took place when my boy took his first breath. (One of thousands of miracles to be sure, but this one absolutely floors me. every.single. time.)

Think about it: prior to being born, Mama took care of everything. She did the breathing, eating, taking out the trash and Junior just sat there kicking my ribs while the umbilical cord and Mama did all the hard work.

His heart had no need to pump blood to the lungs to pick up oxygen, because, well because Mama had already sent over a fresh supply. (I’m beginning to see a theme here…).

In an adult’s (actually anyone post being born) lungs, blood is pumped over from the heart, and there in the lungs, the blood picks up a fresh supply of oxygen and gets rid of the carbon dioxide waste.

In an unborn child’s heart, the lungs do not take in oxygen and the heart does not pump blood over to pick oxygen up (as Mama has already provided fresh, oxygen-rich blood and sent it to the heart via the umbilical cord).

Instead – the heart bypasses the lungs almost altogether. Kinda hard to imagine, but it does so because the heart develops with a hole in it between the right and left side (the hole is called the foramen ovale). To oversimplify what takes place, instead of the blood going from the right side of the heart to the lungs, the blood is shunted back to the left side of the heart through this hole. The left side of the heart then sends it to the rest of the body. 

The right side of the heart essentially has a 9 month vacation since the lungs do not have any work for it to do. The hole through the middle of the heart ensures that this happens. This works great while the baby is unborn and Mama is literally breathing for him.

Listen very carefully to this next part. It blows my mind every time I think of it. It’s go time and Junior is born. Bright lights, cold room – a shock to the system to say the least. Junior’s heart must immediately change its anatomy so that blood can immediately start being shunted to the lungs so that with that first wail (a beautiful sound to Mama), there will be a transport system for oxygen to the lungs, then back to the heart and then to the rest of the body.

Mama ain’t takin’ out the trash and mainlining oxygen no more babycakes! Time to do it yourself! Yes, I know we gave Junior zero warning that suddenly this hole in your heart  would have to close up and the heart suddenly have to change form and function, but it needs to happen now, immediately…if you want to survive!

I hope you got the gravity of what just happened. I hope you understood that no child would survive if their heart did not suddenly change its way of transporting oxygen by changing form and function the instant he took his first breath. 

NO. CHILD.WOULD. SURVIVE.  

God in His perfect, omniscient creation made the heart to do this –the.very.first time. Junior did not have the luxury of waiting millions of years while evolution fiddled with the DNA so this could happen. Junior had a few seconds…to breathe or not to breathe. To survive or not to survive.

My son took his very first breath and turned a lovely shade of pink. He did not give the usual scream of indignation that babies usually do when presented to this cold, loud world. Maybe he knew his Mama would figure out a way to dote on him and still give him almost every thing he needed. Maybe the hour of me relaxing in the the jacuzzi made him mellow too. He's a smart one, my boy J.

I am so grateful God made it so that hole in our hearts would be closed up when we took our first breath. I am also grateful that He left a spiritual hole in our hearts. One, that only He can fill. That God shaped hole in each of our hearts.

 Ecclesiates 3:11 says
¹¹ He has ^amade everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot ^bfind out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

In our hearts, we all yearn for that which is outside of us and greater than us. We long to know God, and thankfully just as He provided a way for each newborn baby, he already made a way for us to know Him.

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, (Colossians 1:15).

So as God lovingly made a plan for us as we were born, he lovingly became man himself, ironically coming as a baby…to fix our hearts…to be our provider…to make a way where He could meet all the desires of our hearts…to give us a way to become part of His family. God alone could fill that hole…and He alone could fill that hole.