(Please, excuse me my little English. I'm learning it just right now)
In December 2001, at the age of 42, I started living with Orlando, my boyfriend. In March of 2002 it started to provoke me
very much the lemon juice to my food. Everything I ate received its sprinkling of lemon, so I felt it was much more
tasty I did not realize they were the famous "cravings".
When I had other more noticeable symptoms, I suspected that I was pregnant, I had a laboratory test and it was positive.
For the time I was living in my hometown, Caracas, so I went to apply for Prenatal Control in Maternidad Concepción
Palaces. After the rigorous exams the doctor informed me that my pregnancy was high risk for several reasons:
First, because of my of 42 years old!
Then, due to the fact that I had the uterus in retroverse, that is, the same instead of being upright was located horizontally. This, together with other details of my health as they were: An inoperable cyst that I had in a kidney, the fact that my heart, because of a congenital anomaly, it was the other way around Instead of having a drop shape, it is
pear shaped, with the wide part down. This produces me have a murmur and, with some regularity, tachycardias.
The doctor recommended an "interruption" of the pregnancy. Our response was that we would not take the life of our baby. He said that I should look for another place to control myself because he did not want to be responsible for my case.
The wife of one of my nephews worked as a nurse at the Hospital Pérez Carreño, and her mother-in-law, my sister Nina,
found out that at the Hospital they had the High Risk Pregnancy Control. I went, then, there, thinking
that they were going to give me the guidelines to carry my pregnancy to a happy ending. This time I had to go alone because Orlando could not missing that day at work.
The doctor reads the report that I brought from Maternity, he examined me and then we had a conversation that I remember very well:
- When do we schedule the interruption of your pregnancy?
-Doctor, I need you help me have my baby, not to kill it.
- Look, if it is not born with Down syndrome, it will come with just only one kidney or any other abnormality. I advice you to interrupt that pregnancy. Did you see the lady who came out for you to come in? She has six months of gestation and we are going to interrupt her of pregnancy because she is very sick. She has cancer.
No, I want to have my baby.
Well, we're going to do an amniocentesis to rule out it is coming down syndrome.
-I'm not going to do that test. You want to make sure that the baby comes with Down syndrome to send me
to abort. I would have the test if, in case it came with that syndrome, you could treat me so that it
borns normal. But I'm going to accept my babe as it comes.
The doctor was disgusted by what I had said and raised his voice a little:
- Madam, if the child does not die, you die or both of you die.
I was very upset so I also raised my voice:
- If I die, the baby will stay with its father and its aunts, if it dies I will remain, if we both die, I will introduce myself in front of San Peter but with my baby in my arms. I'm disappointed, I thought that High Risk Pregnancy Control was that
you were going to tell me how to keep my baby, not that you were going to insist on killing it.
The doctor was disgusted with my words and I left furious with his. Orlando took me to a private doctor where
I controlled my pregnancy. The consultations were expensive and in each one of them I asked to do an ecosonogram that It was even more expensive, but we had no other alternative
The next month Orlando was unemployed and they were hard-pressed to cover my expenses in terms of vitamins, food, medical expenses. I began to pray every day to the Virgin of Guadalupe and Dr. José Gregorio Hernandez to help me have my baby. An ecosonogram added another element to our story: At one end of my uterus was forming my
baby but at the opposite end I had a fibroma. The hormone that made my baby grow also made the fibroma grow.
I'm not tall, I'm very short only 1.42 meters (55.90 inches) an I had a super-prominent abdomen, a "potbelly" as if I were going to have twins.
I had an abortion principle. In the afternoons, at about 3 p.m. felt I was going through a hole, everything was spinning.
I had bleeding. The doctor sent me absolute rest.
I had a white cord with the medals of the Holy Trinity, the Virgin of Guadalupe
and Dr. José Gregorio Hernandez around my abdomen.
I prayed a lot and every day but I did not have money to light a candle.
I always had devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe and I knew that she was the only Virgin who had appeared pregnant,
and Dr. José Gregorio Hernandez I knew that he was very miraculous. That's why I prayed them every day.
One night, having three months of gestation, visiting my mother's house, sleeping in her same bed, I began to feel very bad. She did not know the difficulties of my pregnancy because I did not want to worry her because she was not well with her heart. Only my sister Nina knew the problem.
I was very restless that night and went to bed in the living room, on the sofa, so that my mom would not realize that something happened me.
I fell asleep on the couch and woke up because a hand rubbed my abdomen on the side just where my baby was forming, I opened my eyes and there was no one visible but I still felt the warmth of a hand. I thought:
- Dr. José Gregorio Hernández, welcome, help me have my baby. So old I am, I am sure that it' s my only chance
to be a mother! Little Virgin of Guadalupe, help me, help me!
The sensation of the hand rubbing my abdomen persisted for about ten minutes and then it disappeared. From that moment I did not feel more malaise, I spent a quiet day, it did not weaken me in the afternoons, I did not even have nausea, the only thing that reminded me of pregnancy was the big belly and movements of the baby.
When there was little left for the time when my baby should be born, we went to the doctor to schedule the cesarean.
They would have to operate on me because in addition to taking the baby out they had to extract the fibroma. That day the doctor told Orlando:
- Against all odds, this pregnancy came to a happy conclusion. I thought that your wife was going to die.
When they operated on me, the intervention lasted much longer than they expected and halfway through it I passed the anesthesia effect.
However, when I saw my baby's face everything else lost importance. My husband, when he held it in his arms by
first time he said: - It seems as not true!
And her his filled with tears.
When it was two months old we go to Candelaria's church where is the tomb of Dr. Jose Gregorio Hernandez and we left there as an offering the cord with the three medallions.
On the wall of Luis Felipe's room (The name of my son) it had hung a room carved in jade of the Virgin of Guadalupe that an Argentine friend had been given me as gift in Cordoba, Argentina, when we became friends while I was studying Theology at the Lumen Gentium Institute as it prepared me
to be religious in the congregation Pious Disciples of the Divine Master from where I would leave for health reasons.
When the baby was about two months old, he would stare at the picture and laugh with it, just as he laughed when
we made it laugh with love. Other times it looked at it and kept looking back and forth as if something came out of the picture and it will come back to it repeatedly. I have always thought that they were little angels or maybe a light that came and went.
My son is already 15 years old, he is completely healthy, thanks God, and very intelligent. Study Bachillerato and music
and plays percussion in one of the orchestras of the music school. He has great devotion to Dr. José Gregorio Hernandez
and the Virgin of Guadalupe because he knows very well. this story.
The miracle does not end here, last night, while I was writing this story in pencil at home and then transcribing it on the PC at a friend's house because we still do not have a computer, I noticed that in the hand with which I held the pencil Ihad green frost and a point of white frost. When I finished writing the frost disappeared
Here I leave this story, testimony of the beautiful miracle of life. We wish to travel someday to Isnotú (Los Andes, Venezuela), to the sanctuary of Dr. José Gregorio Hernandez and to Mexico, to the sanctuary of the Virgin of Guadalupe
and see there the cloak of Juan Diego to thank because thanks God and his saints
I could experience how beautiful it is to be a mother.
