Content note: This testimony contains references to premature birth, NICU care, serious infant illness, surgery and medical procedures. Although it is ultimately a story of hope, some details may be painful or triggering for those who have experienced child loss, birth trauma, or a difficult NICU journey. Please read with care.
Please note: The reflections and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and are shared in the spirit of personal faith and contemplation. They do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Diocese of Palmerston North.
Komahan and I (Shanika) are originally from Sri Lanka and did our undergraduate studies there, and that’s where we first met. Later, we got married in 2017 and came to New Zealand in 2019 for higher studies. After a few challenging years and then completing our PhDs in 2024, we felt ready to begin a new chapter in our lives. We prayed to Almighty God and, through the intercession of Mother Mary, asked for the blessing of a baby.
Every day, we had our daily prayers; we prayed the Rosary with a tealight candle lit. I prayed that God would bless us with a child, and that our child would grow in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and with people. Even before our baby was born, I entrusted him to Mother Mary, asking her to watch over him, care for him, and help him grow under her loving protection.
A few months passed, but still we hadn’t received the news we wanted. In April 2025, we received a Rosary blessed by the late Pope Francis from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) Australia, if we recall the organisation correctly. The centrepiece of the rosary is the Annunciation. We were so happy to receive that rosary and believed that God was promising a baby to us. We held it close to our hearts as we continued to pray. Then, a few months later, something happened that we will never forget. We are Scripture readers at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit. In July, one of the Scripture readers (June Hurly) phoned Komahan and requested to swap the coming Sunday’s reading. Komahan said yes on the phone and then looked at the reading to practise it for the next day. It was Genesis 18:1–10. The reading ended with God saying to Abraham, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.”
After all this waiting, we believed that it was going to happen, and we truly believed that God was promising us a son. Just a week later, I tested positive on a home pregnancy test. We can’t explain the feeling. It was a mixture of endless happiness, gratitude, experiencing God’s compassion, and at the same time, fear of God. After all these events, we thought that if the baby was a boy, we were going to name him Isaac. Funny enough, we never had to look for a baby girl’s name. Deep down, we knew it was going to be a boy. My mother, Stella, came to visit us from Sri Lanka and arrived even before my five-month scan, bringing lots of clothes only suited for a baby boy. She trusted that God had given His word and that it was going to be a baby boy.
During the 20-week scan, we learned that the baby was a boy! We were not surprised; we thought, “We kind of knew it, right?” I can’t fully express the feeling I had at that moment, yet we felt that God was with us and He was guiding us. I had another follow-up scan in the 23rd week, and the baby was healthy and growing well. We were just happy.
Everything went well until the night of 21 December 2025. December 21 was a Sunday, and Komahan and I were coordinating the 7:30 a.m. Mass. Everything was fine, but after midnight, I started having pain and bleeding. Early the next morning, we met my midwife, not knowing what was happening. I was rushed to the Palmerston North Hospital birthing suite and learned that I had started dilating. Since this was my first baby, I had zero knowledge of what was happening around me or what was going to happen.
I was transferred to Wellington Regional Hospital within the same day. Nobody was prepared for this, but we were bracing ourselves, believing that our baby wouldn’t come this early because we truly believed God had promised us.
But things were happening fast. Within a day, our baby decided to come at 24 weeks, and a neonatologist came to speak with us about what was going to happen next. They explained that we were going to have our baby soon, how extremely premature our baby was, and talked us through the best to worst possible outcomes, including the possibility that he might not survive or could face serious long-term health challenges. We understood that our wishes would be part of the decision about whether active intensive treatment should be given after his birth.
In the middle of all that uncertainty, one thing was certain in my heart: whatever lay ahead, I wanted our baby to be given every possible chance and the best care. I turned to my husband, wondering what he would say. Without a split second of hesitation, he was already responding to the doctor in the same way. At that moment, there was no difference between our hearts. Whatever the journey ahead would bring, we both wanted to give our baby every possible chance.
There were plenty of questions popping up and vanishing in our heads: Why us? Did we miss something? What did we do wrong? Is there any possibility of reversing all this? But when all the odds were against us, the only thing that carried us through that moment was our faith. Deep in our hearts, our thoughts were the same: “No! This can’t be the end.” We believed that God had promised us this son, and we held firmly to the belief that God always keeps His promises. We didn’t know how, but this was not the end.
I gave birth to Isaac at 1:23 a.m. on 23 December, and he cried. A tiny little voice to say, “I am here, Mum, Dad and Grandma.” Another little cry came before he was intubated and immediately rushed into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. They say the NICU journey is a roller-coaster ride and that you have to take one day at a time. We were still in shock for the first few days and didn’t know that the hardest part hadn’t yet started.
On the morning of 31 December, he started to have a very difficult time with ventilation. His chest X-ray showed a large left-sided tension pneumothorax. A chest drain was inserted to remove trapped air from the space around the collapsed lung. He was so sick on New Year’s Eve. Although every part of us wanted to remain beside him, we went to midnight Mass at a nearby church. During the drive, the three of us — Komahan, my mother and I — hardly spoke. I cried through much of the Mass. There was nothing we could control. All we could do was place Isaac into God’s hands.
His health started to get worse. During those difficult days, Komahan and I also felt called to return to the Sacrament of Reconciliation after several years. On 3 January, we went to Mass, made our confession, which we hadn’t done for many years, and prayed together. While we were praying, the priest came over to us and unexpectedly gave us a small Christmas gift: a baby boy’s singlet for three to six months. It may have seemed like a very small thing to someone else. But to two frightened parents praying for their tiny son, it felt like a gentle reminder: Keep trusting!
Soon afterwards, Isaac became critically unwell and needed urgent surgery because he was showing evidence of necrotising enterocolitis. That was one of the hardest moments of our lives. The doctors were honest with us about how serious his condition was. They gently told us that Isaac was very sick and that there was a possibility he might not survive the surgery. Hearing those words, I felt as though my whole world was falling apart. At that very moment, I was shattered, but not Komahan. Komahan looked at me and said, “He will come back.”
I was crying a lot and didn’t know how to process that information. But we never showed our sadness to Isaac. Instead, we went to his bedside and whispered to him, “You are Isaac. God promised you to us. Do not be afraid of the surgery. It is going to be hard, but Almighty God, the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and Mother Mary will be there with you and comfort you. Jesus will hold your pain for you. All the archangels and angels will surround you and protect you. Do not be afraid, Isaac. You will come back.”
The doctors and nurses were so helpful to us at that difficult time. They asked us if we would like a priest to come and pray for him before he went for surgery. Since we were new in Wellington, we didn’t know any priests, so they helped us get the chaplain there. Before the surgery, the chaplain came, and we prayed and shared Communion.
We felt that this might be a test for us. God tested Abraham, but we would never compare ourselves to him; we are nothing but worthless dust after all. Still, we firmly believed that God saw us, knew what we were going through, and would not abandon us. We understand that when we share this story, some parts may sound very dramatic, romanticised, or even hard to believe, as if we are adding drama to make the story more interesting. This may be something people face when sharing their testimonies. But this is not about telling a good story. It is about glorifying God for the way we felt He was with us and moving things for us, and our only intention is to give all the glory to Him.
Isaac went into the theatre, and we were waiting in the NICU for the call to hear how the surgery had gone. And yes, it came after around two hours. Isaac came back from the theatre very unstable after his small bowel had been repaired. His condition was still very serious and life-threatening, and the days that followed were extremely difficult. The surgeons couldn’t close his stomach because of his condition at that time, so he needed another surgery.
His blood pressure became dangerously unstable, and his kidneys had shut down because his body was in shock. He was loaded with medicines. Isaac had two infusion pump stands loaded with syringe pumps and fluid bags beside his bed, and I remember someone looking at those stands and saying, “Oh God, this looks like a Christmas tree,” because it was all lit up. From then on, we called it Isaac’s Christmas tree. He needed continuous medicines and fluids to keep his body functioning, while the medical team also had to carefully manage the excess fluid building up in his tiny body. The consultants were very upfront with us about how critical his condition was. They explained that fluid was also building up in his chest, around his heart. If his kidneys did not start working and the fluid continued to increase, they might have no choice but to intervene and drain it with a needle. They also explained that, because Isaac was so incredibly tiny and the fluid was so close to his heart, even that procedure carried serious risks. Hearing this made us realise just how fragile and critical his condition had become. That’s when Komahan was shattered. He couldn’t take it anymore. Later, he shared that he had been praying like this: “You promised us. We need our son back. We want to raise him. We want to take him places and show him the world. He is not my son anymore; he is Yours. Give us a chance to raise him. Show him how to pray and tell him stories about how God was with him when everything was out of hand.”
We knew no human or medicine could bring him back if his body did not start responding. How could he respond without God saying so? We surrendered him to God. He was surrounded by consultants, doctors and nurses. We nearly lost him a few times that night. Alarms went on and off and the numbers on the monitor went up and down. We held our Rosary and prayed while staring at the monitors. We kept praying. Because that was all we could do. The doctors requested that we stay within the NICU for a few days, as they thought anything could happen at any second and that staying across the road at Ronald McDonald House was too far. His grandmother, who was at Ronald McDonald House, didn’t eat anything for four days. She just continuously prayed.
Then a miracle happened. He started to respond. His kidneys started working, his nappies filled quickly, and all the excess fluid was slowly removed. The fluid buildup around his heart improved. He opened his tiny eyes. Three days later, he was stable enough to have the follow-up surgery. He recovered very quickly compared to the first one, and the doctors told us that, if he was going to make it, this was exactly how his body needed to respond — and he was doing just that.
To us, every small step forward became a reason to thank God. God carried us through each day. The NICU journey taught us not to look too far ahead. We learned to live one day at a time. Every day, we prayed the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, the Thousand Praises and other prayers. We read Scripture beside Isaac. When we were able to hold him, we prayed while cuddling him and sang Christian songs to him. I often prayed to Mother Mary: “He is outside my womb now, but I believe he is in yours. Please hold him and care for him.” We think it’s important to admit that our prayer life had not been extraordinary, and we cannot claim that we had always been doing all of this regularly before. We wish we had, but even now, keeping up a strong prayer life can still be a challenge, and we are continuing to work on it.
Then, on 26 February 2026, Isaac’s ‘Christmas tree’ finally came down. What had once stood beside him as a reminder of how much support his tiny body needed was no longer there; a quiet but powerful reminder of how far God had carried him.
In total, Isaac spent 108 days in the Wellington Regional Hospital NICU, a journey filled with many ups and downs and uncertainties. He was then transferred to Palmerston North Hospital, closer to home. A little later, the day we had prayed for finally came. We brought Isaac home! Now, Isaac is growing well and needs only a very small amount of oxygen support. And he laughs. He has the most beautiful laugh. Whenever we hear it, we remember his name and the Scripture that has become so precious to our family: “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”
Throughout this journey, God also surrounded Isaac with extraordinary people. We will never forget the doctors, nurses, surgeons, chaplains, volunteers and many others who cared for him and us like angels. Their knowledge, dedication, kindness and compassion carried our family through some of our darkest days. Reverend Fathers and Sisters in Sri Lanka and India also prayed for Isaac and continue to keep him in their prayers. Their prayers, kindness and support meant so much to us. We were also surrounded by good people: Ronald McDonald House staff, Little Miracles Trust, and all those in Komahan’s team at work who supported him and helped us get through this hard time. Our friends from the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit were also very worried about us, and they were so happy when they heard that Isaac was doing well. They even gave Isaac gifts, even though they had not met him yet. We thank God for every person He placed along Isaac’s path.
His journey did not suddenly become simple, and there is still a long way to go. We know that life will always have uncertainties. But when we look back, we do not first see the fear. We see God’s goodness. We see a God who was with us when we were praying for a child. A God whose Word gave us hope even before we knew we were expecting Isaac. A God who stayed with us in hospital rooms, through tears, uncertainty and sleepless nights. A God who gave us strength when we had none of our own. A God who worked through the hands of people caring for our son. And a God who taught us that sometimes faith is simply saying, “Jesus, we trust in You,” again and again when we cannot see what tomorrow holds.
Our testimony is not about how lucky or blessed we were, how strong we were, or how we managed the situation. There were many times when we were not strong. Our testimony is that God is faithful. When we could not carry ourselves, He carried us. When we could not see the road ahead, He gave us enough light for the next step. When fear filled our hearts, He reminded us of His promises. And through our little Isaac, God has taught us more deeply than ever before that His goodness is not only found when life is easy. His goodness can also be found in the darkest valley; in the strength to continue, in the people He sends to walk beside us, in the hope that appears when everything seems uncertain, and in the grace to trust Him one more day.
We do not know everything that lies ahead for Isaac. But we know the One who goes ahead of him. And just as we entrusted Isaac to God before he was born, we continue to place his life in God’s hands.
The God who has carried us this far will continue to carry us. To Him be all the glory!
Isaac was baptised on Saturday 16 August 2026 at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit.
