The Miracle of Isaiah David

There’s no smooth way to start this story, so I’ll just say it: on May 8, 2020, my wife Pia and I found out she was pregnant and gave birth to our son Isaiah David on the same day. That sentence still doesn’t feel real, even years later.

It happened in the middle of the strict ECQ lockdown in the Philippines. What started as a regular morning at home - Pia in some abdominal pain we thought was a bad case of dysmenorrhea - ended with us holding a healthy baby boy at 4:46 in the afternoon. The whole day was about ten hours long. Our entire transition into parenthood happened inside one of those.

The story ended up reaching far more people than we ever imagined, but I want to start with how it actually unfolded.

The Facebook post that started it all

A few days after Isaiah was born, while still trying to process everything, I sat down and wrote it all out on Facebook. I just wanted our friends and family to know what happened, in our own words, before the news traveled too far.

Original Facebook post

Pia and I are so thankful for your prayers and support for Team Rapusas in this season of COVID-19 and ECQ. Our story has overwhelmed many of you with varying degrees of reactions - from a speechless jaw-drop emoji to a ridiculous joke.

I’ll take time to write the key phases of this amazing story, but for now here’s a summary of what happened when Pia and I found out she was pregnant and gave birth to Isaiah David on the same day. We can truly say that God is a God of miracles.

• On May 6, Pia experienced abdominal pain at home, which she thought was an extreme case of dysmenorrhea.
• That evening we had a doctor’s consultation via chat, and only managed to pick up the prescription the next day due to ECQ restrictions.
• On the morning of May 8, Pia wasn’t getting better. She took a home pregnancy kit twice - both positive. We told our families, joking that we got pregnant during ECQ.
• The pain didn’t ease up, so we went to the ER hoping an OB-Gyne could tell us our next steps.
• Pia’s first consultation in the OB-Gyne ward caused a commotion. The head of the department gave us only two options: give birth right now in this hospital, or transfer to another one.
• Isaiah David was born at 4:46 PM via C-section.
• The doctors told me the baby was full-term (38 weeks), 3.2 kilograms, with an APGAR score of 9.
• I noticed they hadn’t mentioned the baby’s gender, so I asked. A doctor checked and said “girl.” I announced to our family that we had a daughter.
• When Pia got to the room, she said the baby was a boy. The doctors confirmed it. I had to message the family again.

This is still a developing story, and I hope to share more along the way.

I went from “Pia might be pregnant” to “we have a son named Isaiah David” in about eight hours. I also briefly thought we had a daughter, which adds a layer of comedy that only became funny months later.

When the story reached the world

We figured the Facebook post would get a handful of reactions from family and close friends. Instead, my phone started buzzing all night.

GMA News Online

A few weeks after the post, GMA News Online reached out. We did the interview from our living room over Zoom, sleep-deprived and trying not to wake the baby. They turned it into a beautiful piece called “The Miracle on May 8”. When they put the video on Facebook, it reached seven million people. I still don’t know how to talk about that number with a straight face.

24 Oras

The first mention - June 1, 2020

Seeing our names in the 24 Oras headlines was surreal. There we were, sandwiched between the ABS-CBN franchise news and an update about Hyun Bin. They didn’t end up airing the full story that night, but just being in the lineup was enough to make me put the phone down for a minute.

The full feature

When 24 Oras finally aired our full story, it took off. The YouTube version crossed two million views. Reading the comments was the strange part - people writing about how the story gave them hope in the middle of one of the hardest years any of us had lived through.

700 Club Asia

After 24 Oras, more shows reached out. With a newborn and a pandemic outside, we were careful about in-person appearances. The 700 Club Asia felt right because they were willing to do everything online and they understood the part we most wanted to talk about: how we saw God in all of it.

Our first time sharing our testimony

This one felt different. It wasn’t just retelling a wild story anymore - it was talking about what we believed had happened, and why. Their team felt like friends, not interviewers, and that made the conversation easier.

Coming back years later

A few years later they invited us back for an update. Isaiah was running around, full of personality, looking nothing like the impossible question mark we’d brought home that day in 2020. Telling that part of the story - the years after - felt like closing a loop we didn’t know we’d opened.

DZMM Teleradyo

Winnie Cordero from Winner sa Life reached out for our first radio interview. Radio is its own thing - no camera, no edit, just a microphone and the knowledge that someone out there is hearing you while they’re cooking, commuting, or doing laundry. There’s a closeness to it that TV doesn’t quite have.

What I think about now, looking back

• Facebook Video - 7 Million Views

For us, May 8, 2020 was personal. A wild, unforgettable, very loud family day. But somewhere in the middle of all the news coverage and messages from strangers, I started to realize that it had become bigger than us. It had quietly become something other people held on to during a really dark year.

That part still surprises me. We didn’t set out to inspire anyone. We just wrote a long Facebook post.

Other places that wrote about it

If there’s one thing Isaiah’s story taught me, it’s that life doesn’t always give you a heads-up. Sometimes the biggest moments arrive on a regular Friday, in a regular living room, in the middle of a regular year that turned out to be anything but. You don’t get to prepare for them. You just get to live them - and if you’re lucky, look back later and see what you couldn’t see at the time.