Author Angela Hayes: Guest Post- Peggy Jaeger- Intervention of an Angel

It's a wonderful Wednesday readers and I'm happy to have you here.

I'm just as happy to have one of my writing besties, Peggy Jaeger, as she introduces her new book, The Voices of Angels, and tell us a little about her own angel intervention.

So much of what I do as a writer is prompted by events I’ve been told about, dialogues I’ve overheard while being out and about, and by my natural nosiness to learn about people, what makes them tick, and how they get on in life.

Having said that, I also draw from my own life experiences when coming up with situations and plotlines for my characters. One case in point is a scene in my newest book, THE VOICES OF ANGELS.

Writer Carly Lennox is being interviewed on a morning chat show about her newest book –befittingly called – The Voices Of Angels. She is asked what prompted her to write a non-fiction book when she is such a well-known fiction mystery author, about angels. She relates an individual event that made her believe they were real and wanted to explore if other people had experienced the same kind of event. The story she tells in the book is actually the birth of my daughter.

On the day I was due to deliver, I had an accident. My 120 pound dog knocked me down while we were out walking and since I had her leash wrapped around my hand, she dragged me about twenty feet – on my belly – to chase after something. I immediately went into labor at the jarring. This was a Friday.

By Monday morning I had not delivered my daughter, despite my water breaking and massive does of Pitocin to get my cervix to dilate. Add to that the multiple decelerations in my daughter’s heart rate while she was being tracked on a fetal monitor, and my doctors felt the only way to ensure the baby’s safety was to do a Caesarean section. My anesthesiologist gave me the choice of an epidural –where they could have the baby delivered within a half hour, or a general, where she could be out in under 7 minutes.

I didn’t know which to take. There were health benefits for the baby if I took the spinal – the medication wouldn’t cross into her body, but the time frame was worrisome. There is always a severe risk with general anesthesia crossing the baby’s blood brain barrier and doing neurological damage. My husband left the room to speak to the doctors and I just closed my eyes, torn.

Then, out of nowhere, I felt…something… in the room with me. I opened my eyes, saw nothing unusual, but in the next instant a voice whispered into my ear to take the general or my baby wouldn’t survive the delivery.

There was no one else in the room with me and that voice was as clear as crystal glass.

When my husband and the doctors came back into the room, before they could even speak, I told them I wanted the general and to get me moving into the operating room immediately. They moved quite fast to do so.

Hours later when I was awake, my husband, my obstetrician and my anesthesiologist came to visit and all three of them told me I’d made the correct choice in asking for general anesthesia. It seems the accident had shifted my baby and her umbilical cord had wrapped around her neck several times. Every contraction I had – and there were thousands due to the Pitocin – cut off her oxygen supply. If we had waited for the spinal to take effect, she would not have survived. As it was, once she was taken out of me, she was pulseless and apneic ( non breathing) for her first 2 Apgar scorings. These are ratings given to newborns for things like reflexes, breathing, response, etc. Only after about 5-6 minutes, and the valiant efforts of the neonatal nurses who worked on her, did she start to color up and breathe.

I have always believed I have a Guardian Angel. Too many potentially life-threatening things have happened to me over my lifespan to not believe something or someone was spiritually looking out for me. This incident with my daughter solidified my beliefs.

Using this event as a motivating factor for Carly Lennox proved worthwhile to the storyline of VOICES for so many reasons. Which ones, you ask? Well, you’ll just have to get the book to see!

As always Angela, thanks for being such a supportive writing friend and hosting me today. Every time I tell this story I relive those frantic three days and thank God my lovely daughter –who will be 27 this year – (EGADS!) survived due to the intervention of an Angel.

Blurb:

The last thing Carly Lennox is looking for as she sets out on her new book tour is love. The independent, widowed author is content with a life spent writing and in raising her daughter. When newscaster Mike Woodard suggests they work on a television magazine show based on her book, Carly’s thrilled, but guarded. His obvious desire to turn their relationship into something other than just a working one is more than she bargained for.

Mike Woodard is an ambitious man-and not only in his chosen profession. He wants Carly, maybe more than he’s ever wanted anything or anyone else, and as he tells her, he’s a patient guy. But the more they’re together, Mike realizes it isn’t simply desire beating within him. No. Carly is the missing piece in his life. Getting her to accept it-and him- may just be the toughest assignment he’s ever taken on.

Available from:

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1TJuqUC

The Wild Rose press: http://bit.ly/1S6NSue

Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/search?Query=The%20Voices%20of%20Angels%20(Peggy%20Jaeger)&ac=1&acp=the%20voices%20of%20ange

Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-voices-of-angels-peggy-jaeger/1123368400?ean=2940157711450