Little Isaiah Homar, born prematurely by emergency C-section after his mother suffered a placental abruption in April 2022, just celebrated his first birthday.
Born weighing less than two pounds and with little hope of survival, Isaiah is now thriving at more than 15 pounds.
He was born at just 26 weeks and three days after his mother, Bethany Homar, who was having an uneventful pregnancy, experienced some period-like cramping. When she noticed she was bleeding, she contacted the hospital, and the staff immediately urged her to come in. She was having a placental abruption, a very dangerous condition in which the placenta either fully or partially separates from the wall of the uterus before the baby is born. If this happens, the baby could be deprived of oxygen and die before delivery, or a mother could bleed to death.
When she arrived at the hospital, Bethany was faced with two unthinkable options. She could risk him dying in the womb while the doctors attempted to stop the bleeding, according to the Mirror UK, or she could have him delivered early to give him a chance at life. Despite the risk to her own health, she did not want to give up on her baby. “I had to give him a chance,” she said. But Isaish “wasn’t born breathing,” she told MyLondon, “and doctors told me they resuscitated him for 17 minutes and if it had been a few more minutes they would have had to stop. He pulled through at the last second.”
Reflecting on the progress Isaiah has made since birth, Bethany said, “I just wanted him to live a good life. At one point it was never ending. I thought he would never leave hospital. It was all so scary. It felt like other babies were progressing and he wasn’t then he just came on in leaps and bounds. Now he has loads of hair and he’s so smiley with chubby cheeks. He’s such a happy baby and so good, I can’t complain at all.”
The circumstances of his delivery and how sick he was during his 112 days in the neonatal intensive care unit added several uphill battles to overcome. However, despite his challenges, Isaiah avoided severe brain damage from his 17 minutes without oxygen, something Bethany calls “a miracle.”
And although he has a chronic lung condition, he’s doing very well. Bethany recalls, “When he was first born I didn’t think he would survive, he was very poorly. I expected him to have a lot of health problems and be severely disabled, but he has come on a long way since then. He is developing so well, he’s so happy, and such a good baby. I could never have pictured this a year ago.”
While one-year-old Isaiah is still on supportive oxygen, his doctors are confident they can wean him off it very soon. Bethany, though, is just relieved and happy to have her son.
