By the wonderful grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and in answer to our petition for a baby to Him, our baby Samuel Matthew (Samuel means, “asked of the Lord” and Matthew means, “gift”) was born healthy on May 08, 1999. When he was just two days old, we took him in for what appeared to be slight jaundice. The enemy then began a vicious attack on our lives and our faith.

In what is nationally recognized as one of the premier hospitals around, things couldn’t have worked in a worse way for us and our dear newborn baby. We arrived at the hospital at around 10 p.m. After the initial vital signs were taken, we were told not to feed the baby, because some tests were going to be done. After about a ½ hour, blood tests were done on the baby. We were horrified to see the 2 nurses handle the baby in a very rough way spilling his blood all over the examination bed. The test was repeated a second time and this time the blood was allowed to run over one of the nurse’s hands and then into the test tube. Being cautious and not wishing to provoke these uncaring “professionals”, we said nothing just hoping to leave the hospital very soon. A third nurse came in and said that the doctor ordered a urinary catheter to draw urine from the infant. When she opened his diaper (napkin), he had just urinated. Instead of waiting for new urine to fill up in his bladder she immediately began experimenting on the dear child. Needless to say, the baby was in great pain as she forced an oversize tube into his bladder through the male organ. She left and returned in a few minutes and proceeded to do it again saying the doctor ordered it. We were shocked to see all this onslaught unfold before us. We began to cry (especially the mother who was hardly recovered from a natural delivery just 2 days before and also presently with a high fever).

These conditions of ours meant nothing to anyone there however. No sympathy or even slightest care was ever given to us.

The doctors and nurses then made us wait inside the examination room(not outside in the general waiting area) for over 1 hour until we spoke up. When we did speak up and called attention to the fact that we have a 2 day old whose color is turning paler and paler and also a mother who has postpartum symptoms that are worsening, the nurses’ reactions was extremely callous. They even became angry that we were presenting a sort of indirect complaint about the lack of proper care given to our child . We were simply told, “Yeah, ok.”

Then after a long time when we could not bear it any longer, we made our situation known to the staff once again. A doctor then questioned what time the blood was given for laboratory testing and made a call to the lab herself. (Not one of the nurses who were relaxing at the desk in our presence ever collected the results which were available a long time back.) Now after 2 ½ hours, the doctor then came to us and examined the baby after which she noticed that he was a little bit dehydrated and pale. She told us that various other tests needed to be done including a spinal tap. When we asked her what that involved, she described how the spinal fluid must be drawn out of the baby’s spine with a large syringe. We protested explaining that we had come to the hospital expecting the baby to get some ultraviolet rays for a slightly yellow(common jaundice) complexion like it had been done for a friend’s daughter who had the same condition. The doctor told us that she was considering admitting the baby also. We told her that the baby was more dehydrated and pale because a nurse said that the doctor’s order was that we shouldn’t feed him until certain tests were done. We also expressed our regret and anger that we came to this staff looking for help and were made to wait unnecessarily which further worsened the condition of the baby and mother. When we told her that we were leaving to another hospital where we could get the proper attention we needed, she smiled and said that we could not leave and that she cannot endanger the baby’s life by letting the mother further dehydrate him by not feeding him. She completely turned the tables on us and communicated to everyone involved that the mother is young and not feeding the baby properly. Angered by this, we said that the mother is not at fault and that since it’s our baby, we have the right to take him elsewhere for proper care. She threatened to call security guards to stop us. At this we became even more angry and began to be even more horrified when 4 security guards were summoned by another female neurologist. The second physician was sarcastic and totally uncaring like the first. Needless to say, the mother was by now protesting with a flood of tears that no one should take away the baby and that the infant should not be subjected to further unnecessary and ill performed tests, especially a spinal tap. We were informed that these people were in a position to legally take the baby away from us on the false charges mentioned above.

We spent the next 10 or so days in the hospital with our baby day and night. By God’s grace my leave planned the previous year, had just happened to coincide on these dates or else we would have been at a loss of pay for those days. God knows how to make everything work out together for our good. We were visited by interns day and night with the same questions as to how Samuel ended up in the pediatrics ward. They put him on an I.V. (drips) with a little board to support his tiny arm which was black and blue (just like his feet were from being poked with many syringes), from the rough handling by the staff. Inspite of not being able to prove it conclusively, they said that he had himself developed some illness or gotten it from the mother because there was some bacteria in his blood and then proceeded to take many tests over the days we spent there. All this, when the mother’s lab results all along the pregnancy and delivery were completely normal. The baby was looking very weak from all the mistreatment he had been getting while there. Meanwhile, lack of proper recovery rest and high fever and other symptoms forced us to go to another hospital building for the treatment of the mother who was in great pain. All said, a nightmare of a time was endured by us which we would not want anyone to go through. God was with us still. We were afraid day and night that they were going to kill the baby and then calmly blame it on the baby’s, “illness” even though he was never ill. It happens all too often in the hospitals in America. The Lord showed us how the enemy wanted to destroy us through well-educated, highly esteemed(by the world) professionals.