In-Depth: Sharing Stellan's Story

MINNEAPOLIS - What you share you receive back a hundred fold. That certainly was the case when a family from Mound, Minn. decided to share Stellan's story. Jennifer McKinney was brave enough, possessed a faith sure enough to turn her son's destiny over to God even before he was born.

22 weeks into her fourth pregnancy, she learned her baby's heart was racing, beating three times as fast as it should. The condition is called SVT. McKinney she spent five weeks in the hospital, taking medicines to slow the baby's heart rate.

But her baby had a stubborn heart and the medicine wasn’t working. Israel McKinney, Jennifer’s husband, remembers the hospital stay.

“For five weeks we were told we were 48 to 72 hours away from going home," he said.

For Jennifer, like all pregnant women there is no more glorious sound than that of her unborn baby's heart beat. Because something wasn’t right, she was constantly checking his heart rate.

“It was a beautiful sound and it was a terrifying sound," she said. “I wasn't able to disillusion myself that this wasn't really happening. It was a constant reminder that he was in trouble. At the same time it was comforting to hear it because it meant his heart was still beating.”

And his was a heart beat heard round the world. Jennifer shared her story through a blog. She had been a blogger for several years already, writing a popular mommy blog with seven hundred happy, help-seeking hits a day.

When her baby got sick, Jennifer blogged that she named him Stellan which means calm and peaceful. She blogged when the news got worse. Writing that Stellen has almost complete heart block and mild brachycranic. These two together are nearly always fatal in an unborn baby. Her virtual sisterhood of mothers circled their wagons around her.

“I don't want this to be happening to my baby," she said.

Within days of sharing Stellan's name with readers, a woman in England emailed a photo of Stellen's name written in sand.

“I thought my goal of having Stellen be known before he died had been reached even with just that one picture, that was really enough for me," she said. "I remember thinking that's good. And it was just the beginning."

Jennifer showed a picture and said, “I really love this one because this little girl had just learned how to write her letters and she was just watching her mom read my blog.”

There were photos from the western wall of Jerusalem and the great wall of China. Stellan’s name was written in toothpaste, pasta, pretzels, candy, kids, berries and blocks and blossoms; beautiful blossoms.

The pictures came with stories.

“This team of middle school boys found out about our story and they taped S's to their orange wrist bands and apparently there were four home runs that night and they would get in the middle and chant that one's for Stellan and point to the sky," she said.

Pictures came from nearly every continent: Women in Africa, children at an orphanage in Haiti.

"I was just amazed that they would give of their prayers to our son," Jennifer said. "It just proved to me that there is a common thread that ties humans together.

“I think it's contagious in a good way," Isreail said. "Contagious like Stellan's laughter which is the best part of the story. Stellan survives.

Jennifer said when Stellan was born, he was whisked away, then about an hour later, the doctor came back and said they couldn't find anything wrong with him. Doctors said the medications must have finally kicked in. Stellan's parents say that's only part of the story.

 “I thought, yep, God cured him, he's doing great, end of story," Jennifer said. "Give me that baby I'm going home to my other kids."

But it didn't end that way. Again Stellan's heart proved stubborn. When he was four months old he got sick again. Surgery in Boston in April triggered another flood of photos. There are now more than a thousand of them.

The surgery helped but didn't fix his heart. And yet, oddly Jennifer said, “I have more peace in my heart than I used to when I thought I had control.

There seems no end to the mysteries that this family has encountered because they have shared Stellen's story. Sad mysteries like why some children live and some do not. It's amazing to think my baby can touch hearts around the world so deeply that he can actually knit those hearts those hearts together.

Mysteries, by their nature, may be unsolvable and yet, when Stellan smiles his wise, old soul sort of smile, you swear he knows something the rest of us don't.

“He is one calm baby," Jennifer said. "He just rolls with the punches and I do think that's because he knows that secret. He knows what makes him so special even though I can't put my finger on it.”

 It’s a great lesson we all could learn from. The lessons of Stellan's story are many.

 “There is no denying that love is alive and well, this feeling of want to give and love on our family is spilling over into people's communities and their homes," Jennifer said. "It’s just contagious. Like his laugh.”

Maybe