How Bijan Robinson fell in love with football

LaMore Sauls didn’t know she was pregnant. Doctors thought she had issues with her thyroid, but long story short, it wasn’t a thyroid issue at all. She was no less in her third trimester.

That baby would be a boy, a boy she would name Bijan.

The name Bijan in itself has its own story worthy of a little digression. LaMore and her mother, Geraldine, worked as fragrance models at Dillard’s in the months after LaMore—now Sauls, then Robinson—found out she was pregnant.

The world around her was chaotic as people adjusted to the new reality of a post-9/11 world. Still young herself, LaMore was adjusting not only to the chaos of the world around her, but also to the life-changing love growing within her. Only a college student at the time, LaMore completed that fall semester before returning to her parents’ house so they could help her raise her little boy, a boy who took his name from a perfume.

While LaMore and her own mother were working at the fragrance counter, a Bijan cologne sample was placed in front of her one day.

“Bijan – I like that,” she thought to herself.

LaMore thought about the name before finally deciding that, yes, that would be her firstborn son’s name. Funnily enough, it actually was after she decided to choose her baby’s name so that she could find out what Bijan meant. A colleague of hers was Persian and one day the colleague told her what Bijan stood for in her native language: ‘Hero’.

If the name didn’t fit before, LaMore said, it did now. And what’s a hero without a miraculous origin story?

A month and a half after LaMore moved home, Bijan was ready to make his grand entrance into the world. The excitement within the Robinson family was palpable. Geraldine and Cleo prepared the house for his arrival. LaMore’s little sister Cleyrissa, who was nine at the time, was thrilled to meet her nephew. She had always wanted a little brother and this was the best alternative. And LaMore, even though she was still actively trying to wrap her head around the idea of ​​being a mom, was just so ready to meet this baby that she knew, even then, would change her life.

“Here comes my first true love, something that will love me unconditionally,” LaMore said. “No matter what I do, this baby loves me and I need to love it too.”

LaMore worked for 13 hours with her bundle of love. At the end of those 13 hours, Bijan had arrived. Doctors and nurses placed Bijan on his mother’s chest, but instead of relief, fear soon came. Bijan was not breathing. The nurses snatched Bijan away and started their work.

Time, LaMore said, slowed down.

“I remember thinking, ‘Why isn’t he crying?'” she said. “I’ve seen too many mommy movies in three months, so why isn’t he crying? I know he’s supposed to be crying.”

He wasn’t crying. It was too quiet, even as doctor after doctor burst into the delivery room. LaMore remembers the last doctor who came in with the most clarity. She believes this doctor was the one assigned to tell her the news no mother ever wants to hear or even fathom: you gave birth to a stillborn baby.

“Instead of celebrating life, we’re getting ready to go home,” LaMore said, his eyes misty.

Then, she said, time stopped all at once.

“They say time doesn’t stop, but that’s how it felt,” LaMore said. “I remember the doctors just parted like the Red Sea, and I saw my mother walking towards Bijan, but I didn’t know why.”

To hear LaMore’s side of it, Geraldine walked over to her grandson, who had yet to exhale his first breath of life, and placed two fingers on his chest.

“I could see him,” LaMore said, recalling her position on the delivery table, “and it was like God breathed life into him.”

And then Bijan Robinson cried.

“The doctors were like, ‘That’s what we were looking for,'” LaMore said. “‘We were looking for a miracle.'”

A breathing, crying, healthy Bijan was finally handed over to his mother. The fear of the last few minutes gave way to deep relief. Like her son, LaMore also cried.

“When they finally handed it over to me, I really cried,” LaMore said. “It was like, ‘OK. Here he is. He’s OK.'”

Her little Bijan, her little hero, experienced his first miracle.