Life's Beginnings : A Study in Biblical Obstetrics - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Thomas Moraczewski currently practices medicine in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, where he specializes in Obstetrics and Gynecology. He is a graduate of LaSalle Military Institute in New York, and the University of Notre Dame, where he received many awards and honors.

After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Loyola University School of Medicine, in Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Moraczewski began his internship and Ob-Gyn residence at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington. In 1983, he became Chief, Ob-Gyn Service at the U.S. Army Medical Hospital in Missouri, and remained in that position until his honorable discharge in 1980.

Currently, Dr. Moraczewski is affiliated with the Fort Walton Beach Medical Center and the SugeriCenter, and is Co-Director of Ultrasound Associates, all located in Fort Walton Beach. He has served on both the National Medical Boards, and the American College of Ob-Gyn. Some of the societies he is affiliated with are the American College of Ob-Gyn, American Reproductive Society, American Institutes of Ultrasound, the American Medical Society, the Christian Medical and Dental Society, as well as various local and state affiliations.

In keeping with his firm commitment to the unborn child, Dr. Moraczewski volunteers as an attending physician for the Family Life Center Maternity Home, a home for crisis pregnancies. With more than 4,500 babies delivered at this time, Dr. Moraczewski still manages to find time to spend with his wife, Neelam, and their two children, Alexei and Alya.

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I have been privileged to touch the freshest and newest of human life over 4,000 times in my career. Each delivery is a singular, special, and sacred event. . . .waiting for patients to deliver allows one many hours to meditate upon his own calling, destiny, the will of God for his life, and mortality. . . I told the family, however, that medical science had done what it could, and that divine assistance would be needed for her ultimate healing. . . my eyes often stare at the newborn infant in my arm that is only seconds old. My mind wonders what the future of this baby might be. Could this little girl become a scientist, and astronaut, a ballerina? Could this boy become an architect, a pro basketball player, a pianist, a politician? Will this infant grow healthily and learn to know the Lord? . . . I felt the strong inner impression of the Lord. "Touch the blanket over her foot . . .you know what to say.". . . the large nine-pound , seven-ounce girl emerged with good APGAR scores and without any adverse medical sequelae. The Lord had again intervened in another potentially life threatening situation.

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Ms. E was a petite 4'11" woman who had struggled several years earlier in the vaginal delivery of a seven-and-a-half pound girl. In her second pregnancy she was being induced for suspected large infant in order to optimize her chances of vaginal delivery. Labor proceeded well until complete cervical dilitation. After pushing for an hour, the fetal head emerged slowly from the birth canal, but the baby's face retracted briskly back against the perineum and became immobilized there. Severe shoulder dystocia was encountered. Despite various obstetrical maneuvers to deliver the infant's shoulders and body, including hyperflexion of the mother's legs, corkscrew rotation of the baby's shoulders inside the pelvis, downward suprapubic pressure by labor staff, and attempts to access the baby's posterior arm, it would not deliver. The infant's large shoulders were deeply impacted behind the mother's pubic bone. The baby's face was becoming mottled and purplish from its half-emerged position. Minutes seemed like hours; sweat poured down my face and mask. After exhausting all the known steps to handle this obstetrical crisis, I momentarily backed off from the patient and stared at the baby. My career flashed before me; I felt certain that the baby could not be delivered and would die struggling to be born. I prayed silently and fervently for divine assistance. As I went back to the patient and tried one final attempt at rotating the infant's body, the posterior shoulder seemed to free itself, allowing the eventual disimpaction of the opposite shoulder and the remainder of the fetal trunk and legs. The large, nine-pound, seven-ounce girl emerged with good Apgar scores and without any adverse medical sequelae. The Lord had again intervened in another potentially life-threatening situation.

A 38-yar-old woman who had sustained severe head injuries as a teenager during an auto accident had already delivered several healthy infants uneventfully over the past ten years. Her last pregnancy in 1994, was similarly normal; she had a very rapid labor and successful vaginal delivery. The day following her birth, however, the patient was preparing to go home. It was evening time, and as she gazed out the hospital window, she commented to the nurse that she perceived strange odors. She immediately began a series of seizures and fell to the floor. She continued to convulse and became comatose. She was able to breathe well on her own, but was unresponsive to external stimultation. The ER physician and another obstetrician who had been nearby in the labor room immediately responded. A staff neurologist was summoned. Medications were administered to control the convulsions, but the patient remained unresponsive. She was taken to the radiology department for CT scanning of the brain, looking for possible intracranial bleeding or tumor to account for the sudden onset of seizures. Her blood pressure had been normal. As the patient was being scanned in the CT tunnel, the other obstetrician turned to me with a forlorn look and exclaimed, "She's not going to make it!" The patient was thereafter taken to the ICU where she was surrounded by nurses, monitoring equipment, and the neurologist. Amid this ICU admission bedlam, I felt the strong inner impression of the Lord. "Touch the blanket over her foot," the small inward voice whispered. "You know what to say." The words of Mark 14 sprang to mind: "In my Name," says Jesus, "You shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. . ." I worked my way between the ICU personnel and touched her leg, quietly reciting the Lord's words of healing under my breath . . .As if a bolt of lightning had coursed through her comatose body, she sprang upward in the bed, fully alert and lucid, to the utter astonishment of the team working over her. The neurologist examined her fully, observed her for another day, and she was thereafter discharged from the hospital. The neurologist has kept her on anticolvulsive therapy as a precautionary measure.

At term, a pregnant woman was exhausted from having a long, grueling labor. After finally reaching complete cervical dilitation, she pushed unsuccessfully for several hours in the birthing room. She was transported to the delivery room to enhance pushing efforts. If an instrumental delivery could not be accomplished, then a Cesarean delivery would be done. The fetal head was in a posterior positon, with its face looking upward in the birth canal. It could not descend properly at this angle. After three-and-one-half hours of pushing, a forceps extraction was cautiously attempted. My experience indicated that due to the particular angulation of the baby's head, a counterclockwise rotation would be necessary. Several attempts at rotation were unsuccessful. The forceps barely budged the baby's impacted head. As I eased my grip on the forceps handles and prepared to abandon any further attempts with instruments, the forceps began to rotate by themselves in a clockwise fashion. Quietly stunned by this eemingly invisible set of hands assissting me in a direction that should not work, I grasped the forceps handles again and began to finish the ritation in that direction. The baby then rotated easily into the normal anterior or face down position and delivered vaginally. It was a very healthy infant. As I reflected upon this most difficult delivery, I knew that a divine intervention had indeed occurred.