J. Durham Weir

How to begin?

New year's Eve I lay in a hospital bed watching the nurse up my pitocin dose to 11. I only knew I was contracting if I was holding my stomach or watching the monitors. Ah, modern medicine. I hated it that night. By that point I'd been "in labor" for 12 hours with only 4 small centimeters to show for it. I'd gone in earlier that morning because I was worried I was leaking amniotic fluid. Turns out I was, so they induced me. Thirteen hours later my water actually broke. Fifteen minutes later I pushed out a beautiful baby boy.

 He cried. That cry is always my cue to relax - they're breathing. They placed him on my chest, all 6 lbs 11 oz. He was creamy white and so perfect. The nurse took him to clean him up. Jayson got to hold him for a short time after. Then the nurse took him again to finish up with her work. Jayson and I both were exhausted from the day and I'm ashamed to say I fell asleep. The nurse woke me, "You're son isn't breathing well. I've got him on a monitor and the doctor is coming to see him."

They took my baby to the NICU. They took me to a recovery room where I stared at the crib where my baby should have been.

Hours later, my legs barely feeling the floor, I walked along the walls to the NICU to see him. It was ... it was. I sat nearby and watched his little chest heave. Honestly, that's all I remember about that NICU. When I couldn't bare to sit any longer I went back to my room. Hours later the doctor came in to tell us he'd had to perform an emergency procedure to remove air from his lung cavity. He'd popped his left lung. They call it a spontaneous pnuemothorax. Hours later he popped his right lung. At 5 AM they transferred him to a different NICU at a different hospital.

The transfer team came. They moved him from one isolette to another. I just watched. I couldn't hold him or comfort him as he struggled. They closed the side and again I watched strangers wheel my baby away. Jayson followed the ambulance while I waited alone in my hospital room for the morning so they could discharge me. I don't remember sleeping.

The next afternoon I saw him again. From then on life lost all sense of time. I didn't know what day it was or what time it was. I lived by different numbers: 45-50 for blood pressure, 140 for heart rate, 98-100 oxygen intake, % of pure oxygen they gave him, and overall respratory rate. I knew by those numbers how we were doing.

Beyond those numbers everything was concentrated on the next chest x-ray and blood gas. Then, the procedures that followed. One, then two, and finally three chest tubes on his right side. And the various ways to give him oxygen: CPAP, a bubble, then low pressure oxygen, until finally the oscillating ventilator.

The moment they told me they needed to intibate him was the worst for me. There were so many difficult moments leading up to that, but with my limited understanding the vent meant he was very very sick. It meant he was the 5% sick enough to need it. It meant fentanyl and vecuronium (a paralyzing drug so he wouldn't fight the vent). It meant the pneumos were not going away. But it was what he needed. So, I went in. I held his tiny fingers and I cried. I cried as I looked down at my sweet boy's face through his oxygen bubble. I kissed his fingers and told him how sorry I was. Sorry - just sorry. Then I left. They wouldn't let us stay. Jayson went in the other room but I went downstairs and away. Then when I came back and saw his little chest vibrating unnaturally ... I don't know how to explain how I felt. It was awful.

The days that followed are such a blur. I slept when I couldn't stand to sit any more. I pumped every two hours. I watched and waited. I watched as his little body swelled from the extra fluid. He gained almost a pound. I watched as they gave him a blood transfusion. I watched as his IV was infiltrated and moved to his other hand. And then I watched as the chest x-rays slowly started to look better. And then - it felt so suddenly - the air in his chest cavity was gone. His right lung moved back to his right side. His heart shifted back to the center, and the left lung was the only thing on the left. It was so strange. The same strangeness that was there when it happened. I kept waiting for something else to happen. Something else to take him away from recovery. It never came. Instead they started removing wires, IVs, and tubes. He was extabated. I got to hold him for the first time since just after his birth. My favorite nurse helped me nurse him for the first time. He graduated to the less intensive care pod. They took the isolette away. I got to dress him in real clothes. Until finally, ten days after he was born, we brought him home. Only ten days. Ten of the longest days of my life. It might as well have been ten years, but it was still only ten days.

Then there was the moment, the moment we walked in the door and the girls ran to see him. I'll never forget how I felt.  There aren't words. It was the greatest gift. I looked down and saw my entire family together in the same room. I had felt so fragmented for what seemed a lifetime, but now there we were, complete.