Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 3, 1994 TAG: 9401030029
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARIE JOYCE THE FREE LANCE-STAR
DATELINE: SPOTSYLVANIA (AP) LENGTH: Long
Actually, there are only two. But they rule the Brown house with that despotism peculiar to newborns.
Because of them, the furniture has been moved around several times. Because of them, mom Sarah Brown hasn't been able to fix her hair all day, and nobody in the house has had a full night's sleep.
There is Ethan, the newest of the newborns, with his big head and hands, his shock of dark hair and his eyes that probably will stay blue. He is wrapped in blankets and sleeping in his playpen.
And there is Olivia, his sister, six weeks older but a good pound lighter, with delicate features, light, wispy hair and eyes that may turn brown, wearing flannel pajamas with pink flowers. She rests in the arms of her grandmother, Cathy Brown, and turns her head curiously to stare at the blinking lights of the Christmas tree.
It's hard to imagine two children who were more longed-for and anticipated by their parents.
Sarah and Chris Brown, happy parents this holiday season, went through almost unbearable suffering to start their family. Before there were Olivia and Ethan, there were Ashley and Seth - two babies who died. And for a while, it seemed that Olivia might not make it, either.
\ Chris and Sarah Brown met almost six years ago at a Bible-study class he taught for new members at Calvary Chapel of Fredericksburg.
Sarah had been a lukewarm churchgoer all her life. Divorced, with a young son, Ben, her sisters urged her to come to their church.
Chris, on the other hand, already was an elder in the church. An engineer, he was studying to be a minister.
Both 27, they made a wonderful couple. He's 6 feet tall and handsome. She's 5-feet-11, with the striking good looks that got her jobs as a runway model when she was younger.
They dated seven months before they married.
Sarah learned she was pregnant in September 1990.
Two days after Christmas that year, Sarah went for her second routine ultrasound, a test that uses sound waves to give doctors a view of internal tissue.
As Sarah lay on the table, she noticed something different in the expression on the face of the technician performing the test.
The doctors told her they couldn't diagnose the problem. She needed to see a specialist the next day at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.
The testing the next day at MCV was surprisingly short, and the diagnosis was blunt.
"They gave us no hope," Chris said.
The condition is called "dysplastic kidneys," a term that means the fetus's kidneys aren't working.
There is no effective treatment.
"That was it," Sarah said. "There was nothing we could do."
Even in states with very conservative abortion laws, the condition is considered justification for ending a pregnancy.
But Sarah and Chris don't believe in abortion.
It wasn't just a symbolic gesture. It was risky, because there is a chance of some minor complications with this type of pregnancy, and Sarah was told she might have to have a Caesarean section.
And she would have to keep up the full round of prenatal care. That meant a lot of doctor bills for a baby who wouldn't live outside the womb.
Chris and Sarah prepared for the worst. They prayed for a miracle, but they also accepted the facts.
In January 1991, the pastor of Calvary Chapel decided to take a sabbatical and asked Chris to take over the church. Chris began assuming some of the pastor's duties and was ordained the following May.
Ashley was born on April 18, 1991, three weeks shy of her due date.
She was born alive, 5 pounds, 3 ounces, 19 inches long. Doctors put her on a ventilator to help her breathe and ran a full series of tests, just to be sure.
After about an hour, Chris and Sarah asked the medical staff to remove the ventilator, and they watched her die.
The first funeral Chris ever performed was for his own child.
\ Doctors told the Browns that the kidney dysplasia was a chance occurrence. The odds of it happening again were negligible.
In January 1992, the Browns learned that Sarah was pregnant again. This time, it was a boy. They decided they would name him Seth.
The bad news came in May. The fetus had the same condition and would die, too.
"I was completely in shock when we got the second prognosis," Sarah said. "It had never crossed my mind."
It continues to baffle the doctors as well. The condition itself is rare. To have it appear twice is quite unusual.
The fetus died in the birth canal.
Despite all the difficulties, Sarah and Chris have no regrets about carrying the children to term.
"Had we had abortions . . . I don't think we would have been as at peace," Sarah said. "We just fully believe there was a reason for these births for these children, however long they lived."
\ After the second death, Chris and Sarah weren't sure what to do.
After studying the Browns' case, an MCV geneticist said genetics seemed to be at work.
The geneticist estimated that there was as much as a 50 percent chance that any child the Browns conceived would carry the kidney defect.
Then Sarah got a call from a friend who knew of a pregnant young woman who wanted to put her baby up for adoption.
Several days later, the pregnant woman called Sarah. The two of them hit it off right away. The young woman was from Washington state. She didn't want children, but she didn't want to have an abortion.
About the same time, Sarah began to suspect she might be pregnant again.
Two weeks after they confirmed that the adoption would take place, Sarah knew for sure: She was pregnant.
It was another boy. And her due date was only about two months after the due date of the child the Browns planned to adopt.
They were excited and anxious. "What would happen if both situations that we wanted so much would end up with a not-so-good result?" Sarah asked.
But her fetus passed the first test, and by the 26th week, the doctors said everything looked fine.
In the meantime, Sarah talked often with the mother whose baby they planned to adopt. The mother spoke of the pain of relinquishing the baby, even though she knew it was the right decision.
Chris and Sarah flew to Seattle.
On Nov. 1, Sarah was in the delivery room with the young woman and the woman's mother. By prior arrangement, the baby went straight into Sarah's arms.
By then Sarah was visibly pregnant herself. She got a lot of stares when she carried newborn Olivia around.
On Dec. 7, Sarah and Chris brought Olivia to MCV for a routine checkup. Early on, doctors thought they had detected a heart murmur, but the problem seemed to have cleared up by the second visit. This was just a follow-up.
But the pediatrician heard the murmur again.
Suddenly, Chris and Sarah found themselves back in a situation they thought they have left behind.
Doctors said Olivia had "coarctation of the aorta."
The aorta springs directly from the heart and supplies oxygenated blood to almost all the other arteries. Olivia's aorta had a pinched section, and blood wasn't getting through properly.
Surgery, on Dec. 13, took less than two hours. The surgeon removed the pinched section of aorta and stretched and attached the two healthy ends.
Doctors said the operation was a success. They had caught the problem so early that there was no damage to the heart.
\ On Dec. 14, Olivia went off her ventilator, and Sarah was able to hold her all day. That night, still at MCV, she was holding Olivia when she started to feel the first contractions.
She was physically and emotionally exhausted. "How is all this going to work?" she wondered. The contractions then died down.
Labor started again the afternoon of Dec. 16. At midnight, she walked down one flight of stairs to another section of the hospital and admitted herself.
At 5 p.m. on Dec. 17, Ethan was born. Just a big, normal, protesting baby boy.
"I was so relieved and thankful," Sarah said.
Sarah immediately had a tubal ligation, a sterilization procedure. Before Ethan was born, they had decided he would be their last birth child. Maybe someday they'll adopt more children.
by CNB