This doctor was very kind, but brief. He told us what we already knew: X was very sick. He was very unstable. He asked for permission for specific medications and blood transfusions to be given. We immediately gave permission, knowing that without these products, X wouldn't make it.
Before he hung up, he said we needed to be there in the morning; even if that meant I got a day pass out of the hospital myself. He even called my doctor and asked if I could be discharged early. He knew what I was already feeling: X needed us or he wouldn't survive. My doctor sent her partner who'd been there during delivery in to talk to me. She said they wanted me to stay 12 hours just to make sure I was ok and not having any complications of my own, but that if everything looked good, I would be discharged. Otherwise, they would give me the pass to go see X for the day if I promised to come back afterwards.
My sister had driven through the night to be with us in the hospital. My husband finally slept some. I laid awake all night, watching tv, checking the time, reading messages from friends and family...and waiting for...almost WILLING...the phone to ring again. The hours ticked by SO slowly. Breakfast finally came and I quickly ate, showered, and dressed. The doctor was working on my discharge. I was anxious to leave and get to X. As we were packing up, my phone rang again.
Once again it was the same neonatologist. My heart skipped a beat as I answered. Would it be good news? Had little X survived the night? We didn't know. The doctor told us that X HAD made it through the night. He told us that they'd been able to stop 2 of 3 medications they were giving him to help him keep his blood pressure up and that he'd started to stabilize. What he said next brought tears to my eyes.
As his voice filled with emotion, he told us that in all the years he'd been a neonatologist, he'd seen many babies as sick as X was. Few, if any, of them survived. He hadn't expected X to survive the night. Yet, he had. He asked us to please get there as soon as we could and then he said something I'll never forget: With his voice breaking, he said that X was a miracle baby. He had survived when he shouldn't have.
We wiped away our own tears and assured the doctor we would be there within the next hour. We signed the final paperwork, grabbed what few things we had, and started walking to the car. It was strange to leave like that. No flowers. No balloons. No baby in a carseat. Nothing that said we'd just had a baby. There was no celebration. The nurses all smiled at us in a sad sort of way when we left. I don't think they thought X would survive. I don't think WE were sure of it ourselves at that point.
We drove quickly to the hospital were little X was waiting for us. Neither of us said a word on the way there. We were both caught up on our own thoughts, but I know we were both thinking the same thing: What if he didn't survive?
When we finally got to the hospital, we found the NICU. We got our parent ID cards and gave them all our contact information. Then, we learned about something we would do hundreds of times to come: scrubbing in. We would spend countless minutes every day at this big sink, using the same soap and sponges that surgeons use before going into surgery. We learned how to thoroughly scrub up to our elbows and how long to scrub for...all in an effort to make sure that X would stay well since he had basically no immune system.
After we got scrubbed in, a nurse took us back to X's room for the first time. NOTHING can prepare you for seeing your own child in a room full of machines and wires and monitors and alarms. It was a strange setting to be in. It was foreign to us. Taking our first steps into that room started us on a path that is so different than the one most parents take. Robert Frost summed it up best: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by..."
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| X's actual room in the hospital |
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