Читать книгу Angel Babies: And Other Amazing True Stories of Guardian Angels - Theresa Cheung, Theresa Cheung - Страница 6

‘The world begins anew with every birth.’

Sebastian Fawkes

You may have heard about or read incredible rescue stories involving babies or very tiny children where angelic intervention seems the only possible explanation. Here are some sensational stories that caught the headlines in recent years.

Saved by a Nappy

In August 2008 a baby fell 30 feet from his third-floor apartment building in the Brazilian city of Recife but was saved by a disposable nappy. Somehow the nappy snagged on a security spike embedded in the concrete wall around the building and broke his fall.

According to a police officer interviewed at the time, the boy dangled from the spike for a moment, then the nappy slowly opened and the baby fell to the ground at a much slower speed. ‘It was a miracle,’ said the officer. ‘He could also have been killed by one of the spikes.’

The child was treated for minor fractures at the Hospital Memorial São José. His father believed that it was God who had saved his son and many commented that it must have been his guardian angel.

Some of you may also recall the well-reported story of 13-month-old Liam Evans during the summer of 1998. It left everyone amazed and once again the newspaper headlines talked of miracles and guardian angels.

Staying Alive

For three days Liam survived on a mountainside, living off handfuls of soil, after a car driven by his grandfather plunged off the road. Liam landed uninjured in the soft undergrowth, but sadly his grandfather died instantly.

After three days and nights on his own, Liam was found by a young boy. The newspapers reported that he had survived because the thick bracken he had fallen into had protected him from the sun by day and the cold by night and the soil had provided enough moisture to keep him alive.

Another baby-related incident that got a lot of press coverage a few years back in 2005 was an amazing story from Africa.

Baby Angel

In a tale that could have been lifted from the pages of a children’s storybook, five-month-old baby Angel was left alone in a Nairobi forest for two days and was found and cared for by a five-year-old dog foraging for food.

Witness Stephen Tova told the independent Daily Nation newspaper that he saw a dog carrying a baby wrapped in a black dirty cloth crossing the road. He was shocked at first and was trying to get a closer look when the dog ran through a fence and disappeared along a dirt road. The baby was later discovered by two children when they heard the sound of a baby crying near their wood and corrugated-iron shack. They alerted some adults and the baby was found lying next to the dog and her own pup.

At the time many people talked about guardian angels taking steps to ensure this baby lived, but the implications of this miracle reached far wider than the child involved because it drew a lot of attention to the desperate problem of abandoned babies in poverty-stricken areas of Kenya.

Then there are incredible stories of babies inexplicably surviving car crashes.

A Miracle!

In 2006 a seven-month-old baby was thrown through the back window of a car and bounced nearly 250 yards in his car seat down the fast lane of a dual carriageway near Teignmouth, Devon. Cars travelling at high speeds avoided him and he emerged from the ordeal with only a small bump on his head. Later, his father said it was ‘a miracle’ his son had not been killed. ‘Someone must have been looking down on us,’ he added.

Another Miracle Baby

In December 2008, newspapers in Sweden also talked of a ‘miracle baby’. This child survived a horrific crash when a car somersaulted into a ditch alongside the E18 motorway near Stockholm on Christmas Day.

All these stories were picked up by the media, but similar ones have also been sent to me over the years. They include incredible stories of babies surviving car, plane and train crashes or runaway prams being returned to safety by unseen hands. The following three stories, the first sent to me all the way from Australia by John, the second e-mailed to me by Karen and the third sent in by Amelia, are fairly typical–if there is such a thing as typical–of miracle baby-rescue stories.

Caught by an Angel

I was carrying my son Jake in his car seat across the road when I was hit by a car. I was hurled into the air and so was Jake. He must have been thrown about ten feet or so. Incredibly, neither of us was seriously hurt. It’s a miracle we are alive and have no broken bones. All I can remember is hearing a loud noise and then being thrown. When I got up, my first thought was for Jake. Everyone says thank goodness he was well strapped into his car seat, but I say thank goodness our guardian angels were close by.

Like John, Karen is convinced that her baby has a guardian angel.

The Angel on the Escalator

This is one of the strangest things, if not the strangest thing that has ever happened to me, and my best friend’s sister said something similar happened to her as well, so there must be angels working on escalators. It happened when my daughter was five months old. I was out shopping with my sister, as I figured I needed a bit of a treat, but as any mum knows, shopping with a baby involves carrying a lot of stuff: nappies, pushchairs, wipes, bottles, a change of baby clothes and so on and on. The toughest task for me, though, was getting up and down the escalators with the pushchair. Normally I’d have taken the lift, but it was very crowded that day so I decided to take a risk and use the escalator instead.

My sister got onto the escalator and then I rolled my pushchair onto it with my daughter strapped in. A teenage boy with his iPod playing got on behind me and although I was aware that he was two or three steps behind and wearing a white hood, my main focus was on keeping my pushchair upright.

When we got to the bottom my sister got off and I began to roll the pushchair off behind her, but I felt a little dizzy and lost my balance. I fell over and my body weight pushed the pushchair away from me at speed and hurled it over to one side. I ended up on all fours with a very painful pair of knees.

I got up and for a moment or two froze with fear. I could hear my heart beating but not my baby crying. I ran to my pushchair, which had skidded several feet from the bottom of the escalator, and it was empty. I turned around and standing at the bottom of the escalator was the boy in the white hoodie, holding my little girl in his arms. She was fine and smiling. Still shaking, I took her and covered her with kisses. I can’t have looked away for more than a few moments, but when I looked up again to thank him and ask him how he had got her out of the pushchair so fast, he had gone.

I asked my sister, who by now had rushed to my side, if she knew where the boy had gone and she said she hadn’t seen a boy. She said I had got my baby out of the pushchair, but I know that it hadn’t been me but the boy. I ran ahead and looked for him, but there was no trace of him.

This remarkable story sent to me by Amelia also features a pushchair.

Hit Really Hard

This happened to me last month and I had to write and tell you about it. I’m a psychologist and have never believed in angels or any of that stuff. I thought it was all wish fulfilment or imagination, but everything has turned upside down for me now and I’m willing to believe the impossible can happen.

I was staying with my husband’s family in Austria and decided to take my young son for a walk in his pushchair. I walked for a while along a main road and then decided to cross over. There were no cars coming so I started to walk across. As I did so, though, I heard a car coming extremely fast from the right. I had no chance of getting away. With a presence of mind I didn’t think I had, I pushed the pushchair away from me so that at least my son would be saved and then I ran after it. I must have pushed too hard, though, as the pushchair bounced off the curb and started to roll back into the road. At the same time I slipped and fell, banging my head. We were both going to die.

Then a woman ran out from the pavement and stepped in front of the car. The driver obviously saw her, because he tried to swerve but didn’t quite make it and the woman was hit hard and thrown into the air. The driver then lost control and skidded into a brick wall, crushing the car and very probably himself. This all happened really quickly while I was still trying to get up.

As soon as I was up, my first instinct was to run to my baby and pull the pushchair out of the road. There was blood trickling down my face from where I had fallen and I must have been hysterical.

By then a police car had pulled up by the crash scene, followed by several others. Later I would learn that they had been chasing the driver of the car, as he was a dangerous car thief. They started to pull him out of the car and his body was limp and bloody. This made me think of the woman who had stepped out into the road. The force with which the car had hit her must have caused terrible injuries. I looked round, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. I asked the policemen to look but they couldn’t find her either. The only other person who had seen her was the driver of the car, but he died two days later in hospital, leaving me as the only witness.

People say the bang on my head must have caused hallucinations, but I know what I saw and I believe that woman was an angel. I wasn’t imagining it, whatever people say, and I know she saved my life and the life of my son.

Miraculous baby-rescue stories may force even the most sceptical of people to at least consider the possibility that something or someone not of this world is watching over a child. But as sensational as stories like this are, they are also fairly rare. Far more common but less well known are stories where babies are not in life or death situations yet still have guardian angels watching over them.

What Were They Looking At?

While I have been researching and writing this book, countless parents have told me they believe that babies have the ability to see angels or the spirits of departed loved ones. They believe this because they have seen a baby, either their own or someone else’s, stare at a particular spot in a room, typically the ceiling, and appear captivated by it, occasionally smiling or cooing as if they are communicating with someone invisible. Sometimes the baby will even lift their arms towards the invisible presence as if wanting to be picked up. Adults can’t see anything themselves and cannot explain it.

There is plenty of documented evidence to suggest that babies do often behave in this manner and over the years I’ve received hundreds of stories from parents who have witnessed their babies clearly seeing something special. In my opinion there are just too many stories out there, like this adorable one sent to me via e-mail by Whitney, to discount the fact that something special is going on.

Looking Up

Last night at about 11 o’clock when I was feeding my twin baby boys I needed to burp them, so I put them down in their cot to get a blanket to put over my shoulders. The moment I put them both down, they started to squirm and fuss. I started to feel tense, because I couldn’t find any blankets and I’d hardly had any sleep the last few weeks.

Then suddenly they both stopped fussing at the same time and there was complete silence. This was very odd, as they’d been suffering from colic for a week or so and either one or both would be squirming for attention at any given moment. I looked down and saw them both staring at the right-hand corner of the room. I looked where they were looking and there was nothing there apart from dust, and there was no way they could see that with their newborn eyes. Rays of moonlight were creeping in from the window, but they were not looking at any pockets of light.

What were they looking at that made them both settle down at exactly the same time? Even stranger was that I felt as if something was saying to me that they didn’t need to be burped and they would sleep better now.

It’s six in the morning now and I am up by myself and have been able to shower and wash and blow dry my hair after sleeping for a good six hours. I haven’t been able to do this since the twins were born.

My daughter, who’s five now, also had a habit of looking intently at a corner of the room when she was a newborn. It wasn’t the same corner as the one the twins were looking at, as we were living in a different place then, but it was still a corner. So if babies do see angels, I think they like to hang out in corners.

Whitney’s experience is fairly typical of the amazing stories about babies seeing angels that I’ve gathered over the years. I never tire of reading these stories, not just because it lifts my spirits each time I picture in my mind the wonder and delight new parents experience when they witness their babies behaving in this way, but also because they bring back memories of the many times late in the evening when I was feeding my own babies and they would suddenly pull away, even when they were ravenous, and focus on something invisible to me. Sometimes they would stare intently, but other times they would smile as if they were being entertained. How I longed to join in with them and see what they were seeing.

On other occasions my son would be in the middle of playing with his toys and stop to stare at nothing in particular. He would then start to babble and coo into thin air. At the time I did wonder if tricks of the light were a factor or if there was some other perfectly rational explanation, but ever since I’ve found out that this ‘stop and stare at something invisible’ phenomenon, as I like to call it, is far more common than I thought. I’m now convinced that babies have an innate ability to ‘see’ at a spiritual level. Here’s Nadine’s story:

Taking an Angel Home

I had heard stories of babies seeing angels and spirits but had never really given them much thought. I can’t say if I believed in them or not. I believe in them now and want to tell you about my eight-month-old cousin called Grace. Last week I was getting her ready to leave the house and she was sitting up on the bed and fussing a little. I noticed that she was staring at the cupboard door behind my back and giggling and cooing as if there was someone there. I was intrigued and sat down beside her. She didn’t seem to notice me at all, as she was enchanted by the cupboard door. I tried to get her attention by bouncing a little on the bed, but she wasn’t interested. Then, as if her eyes were following something leaving the room, she leant forward and looked at the door. Then she giggled and turned back to me.

After seeing that, I believe my little cousin has an angel watching over her. I don’t live with her, but I look after her every Saturday. So from now on when I go to pick her up I’ll know that as well as her nappies and bottles I’ll be taking an angel home with me.

I can’t bring myself to move on at this point and would just like to share a few more special baby angel stories with you, like this one from Ally.

Angel Eyes

When my eldest daughter was about seven months old I remember something very weird–or should that be wonderful–happening. I was a young single mum then. My boyfriend had walked out as soon as I told him I was pregnant. He didn’t want the responsibility of a child. I was determined to keep the baby, though, even though I was worried sick about how I was going to make things work on my own.

One day I was hugging my daughter and playing with her when for no reason at all I started crying. I looked down at this precious child and wondered how on Earth her father could have deserted her. I wiped away my tears, concerned that I might upset my daughter, but she had a huge amused smile on her face and was looking behind me. I turned around, but there was nothing there. I looked back at her and started to gently tickle her to get her attention. As I was looking into her eyes I could see my own reflection, but there also seemed to be the reflection of a tall figure standing there.

I turned around immediately, but couldn’t see anything. Then, when I turned back to my daughter, it was as if my whole mindset had turned around. Instead of feeling that the world was a fearful place I felt that it was a wonderful, loving place and that my daughter would be taken care of.

Things got better for me after that day. I finally got a job and was offered flexible hours so that I could look after my daughter. Two years later I married my boss and we have been together 30 years now. I had two more children with him. My daughter is all grown up now with children of her own, but I like to think that the figure I saw in her eyes was her guardian angel and that she is still being looked after today.

Ally’s vivid story has a certain similarity to Wanda’s story below. Wanda’s world also changed for the better after she looked into her baby’s eyes.

Baby Tim

My first child was born three years ago, a boy called Tim. When he was a tiny baby he used to sleep in the same room as my husband and me in a basket. I was absolutely terrified that he would stop breathing in the night. I’d heard so many horrible stories about how cot death could strike at any time and my son was so tiny that I didn’t think he was very strong.

I was having trouble sleeping anyway because he needed to be held when he fell asleep, so I would hold him for a long time. When my husband wasn’t working nights he would help out, but even when both of us were around Tim would still wake up two or three hours later wanting to feed. After a few months we moved on to bottled milk so we could both do the feeding, but even this was difficult. Life was a blur of tiredness.

To make matters worse, often I would panic, thinking that I couldn’t hear my son breathing. So I would have to get up, go over to the basket, grab a torch and check to see that his little chest was rising and falling. Then I would tiptoe back to bed. If I couldn’t fall asleep I’d be up again checking the breathing. My husband and I were both exhausted and he was getting mad at me because whenever he wanted to fall asleep he would be woken by the baby or by me getting out of bed, fumbling with the torch and checking on him.

I knew my fear was silly and irrational, but it became a compulsion. At one point when my husband was working I remember getting up every 20 minutes or so and then eventually falling asleep with the light on. That morning I woke up a good hour or two later than normal. My heart beating wildly, my first thought was to check on my son. I found him lying on his back with his eyes wide open staring at the ceiling and cooing. He looked perfectly content and I watched him for a while. Our ceiling is painted white and there are no patterns there or indeed anything interesting that I think could have caught his attention, but it really looked as though he was being entertained by someone or something.

I picked him up and sat down to feed him, but even though it was a good two hours later than his normal feed time he showed no signs of wanting to feed. Instead he just looked at me with his huge eyes and there was a hint of a smile on his face. We stared at each other like this for a good ten minutes and I know this sounds crazy but in those ten minutes it felt as though my little son was telling me that he was being looked after. Eventually he closed his eyes and I put him back in his cot.

After that I didn’t stop worrying completely–I don’t think any mum ever does, however old her children are–but I realized I was only making things worse by worrying so much. The compulsive checking stopped completely and I managed to get a bit more sleep, which, as any parent of a baby will know, is a miracle in itself.

Although neither Ally nor Wanda could actually see angels looking down on their children, complete with bright lights, feathered wings and a halo, both truly believe that guardian angels were watching over them and that the babies knew it.

Eliot is also convinced that his baby son is seeing something. Here’s his story:

Definitely Seeing Something

Every night after I bath my 19-month-old son Tyler I lay him down on the living-room sofa to put on his nappy and pyjamas. For the last five days while he has been lying there he has been staring up at the ceiling and saying, ‘Babies’. When I ask him what he is looking at, he just smiles, points up at the ceiling and says, ‘Babies’ again. Then when I’ve finished changing him and he’s ready for bed he waves his hand and says goodbye to the babies.

He’s definitely seeing something and I think they are angel babies because he gives them such a huge smile and laughs as if they are doing something funny for him. It’s a beautiful thing to watch and every night I can’t wait to see if the angel babies are going to visit him again.

Pam thinks her son has seen angels too. Here’s what she wrote in an e-mail she sent to me:

Spellbound

My baby boy did this quite often–as many as 10 or 12 times a day. It started when he was about five weeks old and tailed off when he was about seven months old, although some days he was at it again. It was always the same. He would be looking at something, utterly entranced, and have a joyful smile on his face. Whatever he was seeing was invisible to me. He didn’t always look at the same spot and it could happen at any time. I tried to see if there was anything that could be catching his eye, but I never could.

I’ve heard that babies can see angels because they don’t have the disbelief and hang-ups that cloud the eyes of adults and I do like to think that he was looking at his own personal guardian angel.

My husband thinks I sound weird when I talk about things like this, but it’s been wonderful to find out that other mums have had the same experience. I don’t know why, but it’s given me an enormous amount of comfort. I miscarried four times before my son was born and until he started seeing things I was terrified something might happen to him, but now I know he’s being looked after and protected.

Often when I get letters or e-mails from parents about their babies or children, I find that, as with Pam, talk of angels and the world of spirit is new to them but also strangely familiar and comforting. At first many of them question and analyze and try to explain their infant’s behaviour rationally, because, as was the case with Michelle, something happens which seems so strange.

Sounds Strange?

This may sound strange to you, because it still sounds strange to me, but it really happened. I’d just put my daughter Ashley, who is nearly two, into her high chair and had left it pulled out from the table because I didn’t want her to start grabbing her meal yet. I turned away to get her juice and some wet wipes and when I turned round she was pushed in and already eating. When I asked her who had pushed her in she said, ‘Oma’. I nearly dropped the juice because I always used to call my grandmother Oma (I’m Dutch Indonesian and Oma is the word for grandma I used when I was growing up) and as far as I can remember I had never spoken of her to Ashley. She died when I was about ten years old. I do remember her, though, and my mum always used to say to me that the first time I had solid food it was my grandmother who fed me.

Jessica also found her baby had a link with someone who had passed on:

The Entertainer

My daughter is 14 months and as soon as she was old enough to babble she would talk to pictures of my father. I didn’t think there was anything unusual about this, but then a month or so ago she said she had seen an angel. I asked her what it had been doing and she said juggling. Then I asked what it had looked like and she pointed to a picture of my father.

My eyes filled with tears of joy, because although my father died before I was born, my mother told me that he used to be a brilliant juggler. I haven’t talked about him to my daughter yet and my mother certainly hasn’t, as she lives abroad and the last time she saw my daughter was eight months ago, but I’m so happy my daughter is getting to know her grandfather and being entertained by his juggling.

It is very heart-warming that some babies not only see their guardian angels but get to play with them as well. Here’s Reuben’s story:

‘Play with Me’

My son has just turned one and from the day he came home from hospital he has always been looking at little things around the room that we can’t see. At the moment he is really into playing ‘peek a boo’. Last night, when I peeked through the door of his room to check he was alright, I realized that he was actually playing boo with someone I couldn’t see. I went into his room to play it with him, but he wouldn’t play with me! I felt really put out at first, but then I had to smile.

Sam is also delighted that her toddler, Sally, has a playmate. Here’s what she told me:

Sally and Sammy

A couple of weeks ago when my husband was giving Sally a little massage on her back she jumped up and started to look around her as if she was looking for someone. This isn’t unusual–in fact it happens so often that we have called the invisible person Sammy. I’m not sure who or what Sammy really is, but ever since Sally started playing with him/her/it, she’s not been frightened of the dark anymore. She used to scream and scream at night and I got really worried about her, but now we have the most peaceful nights ever.

Many parents tell me that a beautiful calm descends over their babies when they see their guardian angel and this stops them stressing about the apparent strangeness of it all. In fact, the babies almost always appear more settled and happier afterwards, which suggests to me that it is a perfectly natural experience. Jane sent me this story which beautifully illustrates the point:

‘Missing You’

When Lucy was born we had no idea how Simon, our five year old, would react to the baby and the change in the family dynamic, as he was a much longed-for and adored child who was used to being the centre of attention. When we brought her home we told him that he should not be near her unless one of us was present.

One day he disobeyed us and went into her room. We soon noticed he had gone and searched the house. As soon as we got upstairs we heard him talking in a quiet voice to Lucy. We tiptoed to the nursery door to watch him and listen to what he was saying. We heard: ‘Can you tell me about the angels again, because they were always with me, but I don’t see them anymore and I miss them.’

It seems we are all born with the ability to see angels but as we grow older we stop believing what we are seeing. Some of us do remember what we’ve seen, but some of us don’t. It’s a bit like dreaming. All of us dream but only some of us remember our dreams. Some people don’t think they dream at all, but they do. They just can’t remember.

Babies can see angels as soon as they open their eyes, but until they are about three they can’t communicate well enough to let anyone know what they are seeing. And then they find out that their parents and teachers can’t see what they see. This can be a shock and can lead to self-doubt. Then there is a process that narrows their psychic gifts even more–let’s call it conditioning. This is when many children are told that an apple is red, an orange is orange, some things are real and some things, like angels and spirits, aren’t. Children are incredibly receptive at this stage and keen to please their parents, so if they are told often enough that what they are seeing isn’t real they will lose their ability to see, hear and sense angels.

Instead of worrying or feeling anxious, parents should try to cherish the fact that their infant sees angels close by and should allow them to strengthen that special connection with the world of the invisible. It is a perfectly natural thing for babies to see people who were with them before they were born, or spirits who are about to be born into this world, or angels who are watching over them. After all, every baby is a miracle fresh from heaven.