Mother’s Prayer Proves Doctors Wrong

Penny Blohm was 40 when she and her husband Stephen learned she was pregnant with their third child. The news came on the heels of two miscarriages, one that nearly took Penny’s life. “I nearly bled to death,” Penny relates, “and we were told it would be highly unlikely to have any more children.”  Stephen Sr. adds, “We did want to have more kids, and for ten years nothing happened, and then poof, here comes little Steven. “

They were ecstatic to learn it was a boy. Then, an ultrasound at 17 weeks revealed that their baby had a hole in heart. Penny recalls, “Here we were finally pregnant again, and then we found out, oh gosh, there are problems.”
                         
Later, they learned his kidneys weren’t functioning properly because he wasn’t producing amniotic fluid, and experimental surgery was his only chance to live.

“They said his lungs wouldn’t develop,” Penny remembers. “I was devastated, and my husband was devastated. We had to come home and tell our girls, ages 9 and 14. They each went to their rooms and they cried. It was just a whole whirlwind of emotions. We asked for prayers from our church, from our neighbors. We would pray every night as a family. We just started praying healing scriptures over our son.”
                              
The couple went to California for the in vitro surgery, but the baby’s kidneys had been so badly damaged, the doctor told the family he would not survive after birth.
                        
Penny recalls, “He said, ‘The most humane thing you can do for your son is to just let him pass. It will be peaceful.’ We then received a call from a hospice nurse and she wanted to help us make plans as far as what to do upon his death.” Penny responded, “I said, ‘We are speaking life over our son. We believe that our son will be healed and we don’t want to be involved with any words of death over him.”
                              
The Blohms urged their church, friends and family to continue praying for little Steven. They also took comfort watching The 700 Club and praying with the prayer partners at CBN. “My wife and I both depended on our church,” Steven Sr. says. “We also looked to CBN. We also looked to our friends that are involved in church. Between all of them coming together, it just gives you the feeling that you’re not alone.” Penny adds, “Pat and Gordon taught that, ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,’ and that’s what Jesus taught us to pray. In heaven, there is no illness. There is no kidney disease in heaven.”
                           
Steven was born on August 20, 2010—four weeks early. He was rushed to the neonatal unit at Omaha Children’s Hospital & Medical Center. Steven and Penny waited and continued to pray and trust God for a miracle.
 
Penny recalls, “The night he was born, the doctor kept saying, ‘We don’t think he’s going to make it.’ Every hour she would come in to give me a report, and I would look at the doctor and say, ‘Is he alive right now? ‘ and she would say, ‘Yes,’ and I’d say ‘That’s all I need to know.’”
                            
Little Steven lived through the night, but his survival was a day to day battle. The doctors discovered the hole in his heart had somehow repaired itself, but after three weeks in ICU, his heart stopped. The staff started treating him for low blood pressure, but was unsuccessful. Again, the Blohms prayed.
                         
Steven says, ”There was a cardiologist who had nothing to do with Steven who ‘just happened’ to walk by the NICU and saw the commotion that was going on.” 

That doctor intervened immediately. “It was discovered that our son’s blood pressure got too high,” Penny says. “They thought he didn’t have a blood pressure but it was actually so high that it caused his heart to stop.”  The staff tried this approach, and brought Steven’s blood pressure under control. “When they told me what this gentleman had done, that to me was a miracle,” Steven says.

After six months, the couple brought their son home, but it was touch and go for a very long time. “His kidneys were so badly developed and had little hope for function and would require dialysis for a very long time before he would be able to have a transplant,” says Dr. Lynn Willett, Director of Neonatology at Omaha Children’s Hospital & Medical Center, who worked on little Steven after his delivery. “We felt it was extremely unlikely that he would be able to survive long enough for a transplant.”

“We bought him home and he was on a dialysis machine 12 hours every day, and a feeding pump 22 hours a day,” Penny says. “A friend of mine sent Matthew 21:22 to me: ‘If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.’ And I just clung to that scripture.”
                          
Steven’s kidney’s responded to the dialysis, and he began to develop normally. Penny was a match for a transplant, but transplanting from an adult to a child was risky, Steven was running out of time. On his fourth birthday, they went forward with the procedure. “The surgeon came out and said, ‘We were able to hook her kidney and sew it to the bladder just like I would any other normal transplant,’” Stephen says, “and he was surprised that he was able to do that.”
 
“The transplant was virtually flawless,” Penny proclaims. “You couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. He recovered very quickly.”
                        
Today, Seven takes anti-rejection medication, but is otherwise a healthy, happy five-year-old boy. The Blohms are grateful for the heroic efforts of the staff at Omaha Children’s Hospital. “The fact that he was able to have all these things fall into place over such a long period of time, with so many hurdles and so many difficulties, is truly extraordinary,” says Dr. Willett. “It just doesn’t happen that way.”
                       
Ultimately, though, the couple believes the miracle of their son’s life came from God, and the power of prayer. “Nothing is too big for God, and He wants the best for us,” Penny says. “It was only God. It was only God.”