Mom and ‘Miracle Baby’ : Smiles Are Back for Woman, Boy Who Fought Health Problems

Maja Moehring can smile now that the worst seems to be over, but there were so many bad times in the past three years, so many times she could have given up, that she had to pause when asked what the worst moment had been.

Was it when the doctors woke her with the news that her newborn son had a life-threatening birth defect? Or the painful afternoon her husband walked out? Maybe it was one of the dozens of days during her pregnancy when her multiple sclerosis got the better of her numb, weakened body?

“No, I remember the worst,” the 29-year-old nurse said this week while looking down at her smiling son, who, a week shy of his second birthday, is veteran of a dozen major surgeries.

“It was when my son, Greg, was still in the hospital, before he had even come home yet. The nurses on the floor asked me if I wanted to wipe his eyes with some gauze and saline.” The simple chore of comforting the month-old infant, whose eyes were closed by the swelling that bloated his whole body, made her feel closer to him. Yet she had to leave him at the hospital.

Paradoxically, the array of pumps and wires attached to his six-pound body, which sustained his life, also made it difficult to touch him, much less hug him. “When I left to go home, I took the package that the gauze had come in with me. I know that sounds weird, but most mothers have their babies at home with them by then, and I didn’t. I just wanted something, anything , to have with me.

“I felt so sad then, so lost. He could have died at any moment.”

Greg was born without half of his diaphragm, the partition of muscles that separates the organs of the chest cavity from those in the abdomen. After those lower organs began to push up, through to his chest, most of his small intestines had to be removed. The problems stemming from that, along with his susceptibility to illness, has put the youngster in and out of Children’s Hospital of Orange County for all but seven months of his life.

Home last week after yet another corrective surgery in July, Greg appeared to be like other active boys his age. Watching a Yogi Bear cartoon in the living room of his mother’s Anaheim apartment, he smiled and playfully tugged on the lengthy tube that provides his weakened lungs a steady stream of oxygen. His grin faded a bit when his mother pulled up his shirt to show the road map of scars across his chest and the feeding tube near his navel.

“He’s been so great through all this,” she said, gently deflecting his curious fingers from their inspection of the VCR’s controls. “He’s kept such a good attitude, he smiles so much. But he’s really gone through a lot. We both have.”

For Moehring, whose multiple sclerosis was diagnosed at age 19, many of her current symptoms can be traced to the added stress on her body from the pregnancy. Doctors told her that her multiple sclerosis had no relation to Greg’s birth defects, though early on they did warn her that carrying a child might worsen her own precarious health.

They were right.

Dizzy spells, fatigue, double vision and weakness beset her as the pregnancy wore on. At times, she said, her entire right side would grow numb from the chronic, incurable disease of the nervous system that leaves a third of its victims severely disabled. After delivering Greg, her condition worsened again, a decline she attributes to the stress of her son’s predicament and the collapse of her marriage shortly after his birth.

CHOC nurse Spring Wettgen, who saw Moehring on an almost daily basis when Greg was in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, said it was clear even from a distance that the entire family was in pain. “You could see a lot of things were wrong, and you could tell Maja was sick too.”

Wettgen said bravery is not a rare sight in the 31-bed unit, but she added that Moehring’s strength was particularly inspiring. “She’s been a rock. Really, just a rock.”

Although Moehring has not been able to return to work, the more severe side effects of her disease have receded, and, even more important, Greg is home with her. Although his vocabulary, stunted by his hospital stays, hasn’t advanced past an enthusiastic “Bye!” or the occasional “Mommy,” he has recently started a physical and speech therapy class.

He has also become more hearty, an improvement that has its drawbacks. He sometimes pulls on the stomach tube or the temporary catheter inserted in his chest. Also, Moehring said, she often finds a sleeping Greg in an early morning tangle of oxygen tubing and the wiring from his monitor. “And that’s pretty scary.”

But these, like all the troubles she has endured, seem insignificant when she looks into the cheerful brown eyes of her son.

“With everything that’s happened I wouldn’t change him for anything,” she said, straightening the smiling child’s San Diego Zoo shirt. “He’s a little fighter, that’s why I call him Tiger.”

She ran her fingers through his unruly brown hair. “Isn’t that right? You’re my little miracle baby, aren’t you?”