Editorial: Our very own miracle at Christmas

Tomorrow at our place, a 10-month-old boy will be crawling around experiencing his first Christmas.

I predict Benjamin Phillips will get much joy by scrunching up wrapping paper.

Some of it he will probably drag behind doors, television cabinets and curtains. Being a boy, he has an insatiable curiosity for dusty corners of the house. I sometimes wonder if he does this to keep his parents on their toes, literally, as we are always jumping out of seats to rescue him from his favourite grubby haunts.

You have to laugh and it is easy to laugh at Ben because he is a funny wee guy. He has a lot of life in him.

But there was a time, before he was born, when we feared there may not be any life in him at all. His growth inside the womb was severely restricted, his mother, my wife, Andrea, had pre-eclampsia, and when Ben was delivered it was by emergency caesarean, seven weeks early and small even for that stage of development.

At just 1.5kg, he was the tiniest human being I'd ever seen. He spent five weeks in an incubator at the Special Care Baby Unit at Hawke's Bay Hospital where Andrea stayed hour after hour after hour watching over him, willing him to grow.

This is how she described that time to friends and family: "They were probably the longest five weeks of my life, watching this tiny creature in an incubator with a machine to support his breathing, tubes in his nose for feeding, lines into his tiny veins for antibiotics and monitors clamped to him to set off the alarm if his heart stopped. The love I felt for him changed me forever in an instant."

Benjamin did grow, in fact he hasn't looked back since we took him home. He has a couple of issues we are slowly sorting out, but nothing like what could have been the case for one who started so small.

He's a born survivor and it is all but impossible to get grumpy at him, even when he is shuffling around behind the television, up to no good.

Andrea and I will not have to look far tomorrow to find our Christmas miracle.

Hawke's Bay Today wishes all its readers a happy and peaceful Christmas.