Miracles of life

I took a fetal monitoring course the last two days and it once again made me realize how lucky I was to have a healthy baby boy 8 years ago. If it had not been detected that he was no longer growing and my BP's were too high when I was 36 weeks along, and had they not delivered me that day, he might not be here. And I was reminded of what a miracle a woman's body is. Charlie had the kind of growth restriction that comes from having high blood pressure. The placenta no longer functions right, and so the blood from the mom goes to the fetus' brain and vital organs and not to the limbs and non-vital organs. So what you get is a baby with a normal sized head and chest, and very small abdomen and limbs. If not for this miracle of design, a baby would get robbed of precious oxygen everywhere and thus the brain would not get enough oxygen and the baby might have mental deficits. So while Charlie was only 4lbs and 4oz, and looked like an alien, his brain was bathed in oxygen so he has never had a developmental problem. In fact he is in the gifted program. I am amazed that the whole process works so well to protect a babies growing brain! Makes you think something higher must be at work for such a brilliant process. Babies that are symmetrically growth restricted usually have some mental deficits or congenital anomalies. But with the asymmetrical growth restriction that Charlie had, everything turns out normal once they are born. How lucky we were that everything worked the way it should.