A birth story that birthed a hit song

Diana Hamilton’s hit song Adom (Grace) has won several local and international awards.

At the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards last year, Adom was adjudged the Gospel Song of the Year and  Popular Song of the Year, with Diana winning Gospel Artiste of the Year and the coveted Artiste of The Year awards.

The list of other awards in and out of Ghana will take the whole blogging space if I start to type.

At some point last year, it could pass as the “National Anthem” for events —   it was difficult to attend an event and not hear the DJ play “Adom” (still is); almost every church singing group learnt how to sing it and even those who couldn’t get the words right (myself included) can’t help but murmur or sing along in karaoke style anytime the song plays.

When I started the blog last year, I was discussing my ideas with her (Diana) when she mentioned the inspiration behind her award-winning song – Adom (Grace).

One of her sisters, Dr Adelaide Boateng-Okyere, a singer, songwriter and pharmacist based in the United States of America, had experienced the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and it was out of that experience that the song was born.

You can imagine the level of my excitement when I heard this, a NICU experience that birthed a global gospel hit?  Wow!!!

During the Christmas holidays, I had a phone conversation with Dr Boateng-Okyere (she prefers Adelaide by the way) and what a testimony! What an experience! What manner of love! Truly, it can only be God’s grace.

Water breaks at 20 weeks

Like most mothers who haven’t experienced the NICU, Adelaide had no idea what the facility was or what happened there. Similar to all her previous pregnancies, she experiences some dizziness but there was absolutely no issue with the baby.

This was her third baby so she was not new to pregnancy symptoms or what to expect. Her older children were both full term (actually over term, more than 40 weeks). She had, however, experienced some miscarriages in the past.

At about 20 weeks into the pregnancy, she was at work when she realised she had started spotting (trace of blood). “For me, any sign of blood during my pregnancy is a no no because I had been through so many miscarriages. I called my husband and went to see my doctor,” she recounted.

After numerous tests and assessments, she was informed her water had broken (breaking of the amniotic sac which surrounds the foetus and contains amniotic fluid) at 20 weeks.

Despite the advancement in the health system in the country she lived in, having a baby at 20 weeks wasn’t realistic. Even if the baby survived, there would be many life-threatening complications.

“You know if your water breaks at 20 weeks there is no way the baby is going to survive. So the doctor gave me two options, either I take Methotrexate to get the baby out or we just play the wait game and wait for baby to pass,” she continued.

Adelaide is a pharmacist and she knew and understood what taking the suggested drug meant without the doctor explaining. She and her husband decided to rather wait for the baby to pass naturally. They were allocated a room and told that within the next 48 hours baby would pass.

“We just decided to sit in the room, wait till the baby passes and then trust God. We stayed in the room for 24 hours and there was no sign of baby coming, after 48 hours, still no show. That was when we were transferred from my neighbourhood, Framingham Union Hospital, to a bigger facility, Tufts Medical Centre in Boston.

At Tufts, Adelaide and her husband thought they would be offered a “better” alternative but the doctors walked in and explained that they were just going to monitor her till the baby passed – just as they did at the other facility.

Michelle – a baby born out of “Adom”

Waiting for a maximum of 48 hours turned into days, to weeks and then two whole months! It was at 28 weeks that the baby finally showed up. All this while, Adelaide and her husband had been given a room in the hospital and only waiting for God to have his way.

Eight weeks without water, that’s how long Michelle stayed and survived in the womb. “Till this day, the doctors cannot explain how it happened.  The amniotic fluid is where the baby breathes, it’s what keeps them alive. So it’s scientifically not possible for a baby to stay that long without it, but that is the power of my God,” Adelaide added.

The doctors at Tufts, she said, called her the “waterless womb”. At 28 weeks, Michelle weighed 2.5 pounds (1.1 kg)  but she was perfect!

Adelaide narrated that the day she was in labour, the doctors didn’t believe it because throughout her eight-week stay at the facility, she experienced pains similar to labour pains. “I had been through that pain multiple times and so they assumed it was just one of the usual days. When they realised the intensity of this particular one and decided to prepare me for delivery, Michelle just popped out. They showed her to me and whisked her to the NICU,” she said.

An uneventful NICU stay

For a baby who had stayed in the womb for this long without fluid, one would expect a myriad of complications but there she was just eating and gaining weight.

“I knew our NICU stay was uneventful because there were days when other mothers broke down because of the many challenges their babies faced, but ours was just routine check of the eyes, heart, lungs and making sure she was okay,” Adelaide recounted.

Prior to Michelle’s birth, the doctors had given Adelaide and her husband many reasons to end the pregnancy but at 38 weeks, some weeks after her NICU stay, she was discharged home with no complications but only needed to be on oxygen for a few more weeks.

“The first year was hard because her lungs were underdeveloped and she struggled to breathe without support. This is a common characteristic  in babies born prematurely but that was it. After her first year, she has not been on any medication and has never had any complications,” she said.

A hit song is born

Adelaide recounts that before Michelle was born, some mothers whose pregnancies were classified as high risk just like hers lost their babies.  “There were many instances were I heard mothers cry bitterly because their babies had passed. In some cases, it was the tears of relatives of a mother who had passed. Others had to be rushed into surgery. But throughout my eight-week stay, there was not a single a day that Michelle showed signs of complications till she was ready to come out. If that was not God’s grace then I don’t know what to call it.

“When we came home, anytime I sat to breastfeed her, these words kept coming through, “HOW WOULD I HAVE MADE IT WITHOUT YOU? YOUR LOVING KINDNESS, YOUR GRACE AND MERCIES BROUGHT ME THROUGH. SOMETIMES I LIFT UP MY EYES AND CRY AND SAY TO MYSELF I KNOW THAT WAS YOU.” These words kept coming back to me, “I DON’T LOOK LIKE WHAT I HAVE BEEN THROUGH, YOU HAVE TURNED MY PIT INTO A WELL, SO THE ESSENCE OF MY PRAISE IS CENTRED ON YOUR GRACE, ADOM, ADOM, ADOM. IT WAS YOU MY LAWYER IN THE COURTROOM ….

  “My sister came to see me at home after we were discharged and I told her I had a song, and as soon as she heard it, she said it was a hit song. So she added a few tweaks here and there and that is how ‘Adom’ was birthed.

“Today, whenever Michelle hears the song, she knows it’s her song. She always goes like, ‘Mummy that is my song, mummy they are singing my song,’” she narrated.

According to Adelaide, even though Michelle had a relatively easy NICU stay, seeing her lying in the incubator broke her heart, but her greatest support was her husband. “Usually you only see the mothers at the NICU, but every single day throughout our stay, my husband was with me and he kept reassuring me and praying for us. That made the difference. The NICU is stressful irrespective of your diagnosis, but it can be heart-wrenching if the mother has no support,” she concluded.

Have a NICU experience you want to share? Kindly send an email to nicusoldiers@gmail.com