Dreams you got it, happy

Dear Miles,

I would like to tell you about the day you came into the world and the days that came after it.  Those are days I will never forget, but, sadly, they are not solely the beautiful memory of touching your head for the first time or feeling your soft skin. Instead, the memory of those days is one that I still look back on and try to process even 5 months later.

While I was pregnant with you, I did my very best to be healthy; I exercised until I had to go on bedrest for high blood pressure, I ate healthy foods and avoided caffeine and alcohol and smoky places, I played music for you with the headphones placed on my belly so you could hear the music. I talked to you and tried to help you grow healthy in your warm, dark bedroom.

In my mind, I had visualized how it would be when you came into the world.  your daddy and I would work together to birth you without medication and your daddy would cut your umbilical cord and you would nestle on my chest and we would hold you all warm and cozy and cuddly the whole rest of the time. We would have a quiet, muzzy, comfy time together as a new little family, with plenty of hugs and kisses for everyone.

But it wasn’t at all like I expected it and wanted it to be. We, your dad and I, did work together to bring you into the world without medication. And I am so glad we did.  I cannot think about what harm might have been done if I had used any drugs since you had enough trouble without the delaying, stupefying effects of pain medication.

I was only in labor with you for four hours but they were very intense.  Before long, I was trying to push you out but it seemed to take too long. I didn’t say it to anyone but that is what I was thinking; I was desperate to get you out but as hard as I tried, it seemed to never end.

When you came out, you were limp and quiet and your face was blue. I only saw you for a few brief seconds before they whisked you away to the other side of the room and worked mysteriously on you.  I couldn’t move and couldn’t do anything because the doctors were still working on me.

They were very kind, the doctors and the nurses. They kept telling me that you were ok. The nurses kept talking to me to distract me.

But they didn’t bring you back to me.  They took you away to another room, a room where the babies go who have trouble after they are born.

I didn’t get to hold you, warm and cozy. I didn’t get to look into your eyes or trace your features with my fingers. I didn’t get to tell you that the whole big cold world that seems so scary the first time you see it, that it wouldn’t hurt you because you could just sleep safe in my arms.

I don’t know if I will ever, ever forget that or get over feeling so horribly grieved that I couldn’t make your first sight of the world a view of your mommy’s loving face, of your daddy’s loving face.

Your daddy went with you to the room for sick babies and when your Nana came, she went with you, too.  I wanted to make sure that someone was there for you, since I couldn’t be.

The doctor who came in later said that you were breathing on your own. But that they wanted to take you away, away to another hospital where the sick babies go. Far away to a place I couldn’t go; it might as well have been the moon, for me.

Of course, your daddy and I didn’t know what to do. The doctors said that maybe you had suffered from oxygen deprivation when you were born, maybe, and they wanted to do a special treatment to make sure that your brain would be ok and wouldn’t sustain any damage.  This sounds terribly horrible to a mommy and a daddy who have just brought you into the world, their beautiful boy who they have tried hard to grow perfectly and keep safe for 9 months.  We were scared. What could we do?  We didn’t want your brain to be damaged.

But now, I often wrestle with the question, ‘was it really necessary’?  they didn’t know that there was any problem and  the fact that you were breathing on your own…well, I just wonder if you would have been ok without the horror that came next.  If I had known what you and I and we would all suffer, probably I wouldn’t have done it.

The doctors made it sound so routine and who were we to gamble with your future, as it felt like.

So they brought you in in a transport unit that looked like something from a space station. They let me hold you for a few minutes. And then they took you away again.  Your daddy didn’t even get to hold you. He didn’t get to hold you until much later; I didn’t know that or I would have insisted that they let him hold you.

Your daddy and Nana went with you to the children’s hospital. I couldn’t go then, I had to stay behind.  I sat alone in my hospital room, the room that had been meant to be a little oasis for the three of us, plus your Nana, but was empty of anyone. I watched the moon—it was a full moon that night. I looked at the lights of the city. I slept some. I talked to your dad a couple times on the phone.

By morning I was ready to leave. My doctor came and said she would recommend discharging me but it wasn’t until after noon that I left. By then I was frantic. I hadn’t been able to contact your daddy and I was so afraid that something bad had happened.  But finally, finally he came to get me and to take me to you.

He told me that you had opened your eyes and that you hadn’t been able to stop shivering.

He and Nana told me that you had many tubes and wires attached to you.

I rushed in to see you. I had to ask my dad, your grandpa Schoonmaker, to wait because he had come to see you, too. But I needed time alone with you, just me.

When I came into the little area that you lay, your little head was swathed in gauze and wires were coming out; they were doing an encephalographic exam.  But I didn’t care. All I could do was lean over you and touch you and stroke your cheek and hold your little hand.

The treatment lasted 72 hours.  It was the longest 72 hours of my life. I never left the hospital, not once in those five days.  There was always someone right there beside you, holding your hand, singing to you, calling your name when you would cry.

Because you cried, you cried hard and long every hour and a half. That’s how long the cooling cycle was; when your core temperature got too high, the cooling blanket would kick on again until your temperature went back down and it was the cooling process that was so grueling. You cried and cried and screamed. You couldn’t understand why you had to be so cold.  Was this what life was like? Where was your warm, cozy, dark room that you had lived in?  You knew that things weren’t right, that this wasn’t what you wanted or how it should be. And so did we. How we longed to hold you, to snatch you off that miserable machine and warm you up, toasty and cuddly, and never let you go.

Sometimes you would scream so hard that we couldn’t take it anymore. We would lift you up off the blanket to sit up and stroke your head till you were calm.  One of the staff made a comment about it once, how you were ‘too warm’ when we did that, but we didn’t care.  It took less time for the cooling to proceed when you were calm than when you were screaming and crying and making yourself so hot.

Every three hours I had to leave you. I had to use the breast pump to make sure my milk came in for you so you could nurse when they were finally done with their torturous treatment.  Every three hours I did it religiously, even if I had gone to take a nap in one of the lounges.

Other people came to visit you; your grandpa Bob, your Uncle Marc and your Aunt Vicki, who had come to visit us the Wednesday before you were born and who was on her way back to South Carolina when she stopped by the Children’s hospital.

Every day was the same for 3 three long days, which ceased to be days.  We rigged up some of the screens they had around your bed so it was more private. We put a reclining chair in there, too, so we could take turns resting.

It wasn’t a very restful environment. The constant whir and click of the machines made for anything but a comfortable place. 

One night they let us use a room that was usually reserved for families with babies getting ready to go home. It had a bed to sleep in. I was so disappointed the next day when I found out we had to leave it.  They asked if I knew about the Ronald McDonald house, where people from out of town could stay to be near their baby. They were surprised when I said I w as from Cincinnati. I think they thought I was crazy. But even if I could have stayed at the RD house, it would have been too far away from you…across the street from the hospital…and I wouldn’t have done it.

Sometimes, usually when your body was at its warmest, you would open your eyes. You would look at us and just stare and we would talk to you and smile. I couldn’t help thinking that you were wondering why you were having to suffer, was this all there was to living?  But still, at least you could see us.

Late Sunday night brought relief at last. The 72 hours had ended. The cooling blanket was turned off and you were slowly allowed to warm up.  Your crying stopped. You were so grateful to be warm.

How cold you were can be explained by this little story: the next morning, after they let you get warm again, the nurse practitioner came to exam you. She decided you were looking jaundiced because your skin tone was yellow so she called for a blood test. The blood test came back negative for jaundice. What she was seeing was your normal skin tone, which is yellowish, as opposed to the blue-ish tone you had had when you were so cold.

Another story: the doctor who had your care was concerned because your little leg was not reflexing the way it should; it was tense and jittery. But after you were warmed up, your reflex was fine. I believe it was tense and jittery because you were COLD and shivery.

That Monday was such a relief for everyone. They had turned on the heat lamp and warmed you up and taken the awful tube out of your mouth so you could suck on a pacifier for comfort. They had done that the day before and that had really helped you get through the last rounds of the cold.

You finally were warmed up enough that we could hold you. Hold you!  Our boy!  They had me sit in the chair beside your bed and they handed you to me, wires and all. And you fit just perfectly into my arms, like we had been made for each other.  At last, you were where you had wanted to be all along and where we had wanted you to be from the time you were born. 

When your daddy held you next, it was the first time he had held you. When you were placed in his arms, he just gasped. He couldn’t believe how it felt to hold you, his son, so warm and soft and cuddly.  He had to sit down.

The next 24 hours you got held a lot, by me and by your dad and your Nana. We all held you and stroked your face and your head and kept you warm and cozy with us.  Of course, there were still tests they wanted to do and they wanted to make sure you were breastfeeding ok (you weren’t…at least, you were getting milk, but you weren’t doing it the right way and it was really painful for me… but that is another story all together). 

The doctor wanted to keep you until Wednesday to make sure you were pooping ok. But we had had enough.  I felt that if I had to go through another night at the hospital, sleeping for a few snatches of time on hard lumpy furniture, going into the cold nursing rooms to pump every three hours, shuffling through the fluorescent-lit hallways, I would go mad.  So we told the doctor that you were fine and that we would like to take you home Tuesday.

And that’s what we did.  Of course, there was a bunch of rigmarole to get you out of the hospital: they wanted you to sit in your carseat for an hour while they tracked your pulse, they wanted this, they wanted that.  Finally, they said we were free to go.  So we dressed you in the little outfit that we had brought to take you home from the hospital, little knowing that that would be delayed by a long, arduous 3 days.  The nurse on duty took pictures of it all, from our dressing you to us taking you out of the hospital and putting you into the car.

There were so many babies in that hospital that had to stay there for a long time, that had many problems, and some that would never go home, that would only be here with their mommies and daddies for a little while and some babies that would go home but have such difficulties for the rest of their lives.  We had never expected to be in a NICU and had never expected to view all the pain and suffering that parents must feel as they watch their babies getting treated for a variety of sad illnesses or problems.  And we felt so thankful that you were coming home with us, not having to stay, and that you were healthy and fine and strong.

So, as we pulled away from the hospital, your dad and I both started to cry. It had been what seemed like forever since you had been born and we had been through one of the most stressful periods of our lives (and we have been through some stress!) and we were so glad and thankful to finally be taking you home. So we drove out through the sunny day toward home, your Nana following faithfully behind us in her car, and we drove all the way home with you, the way we had wanted to all along.

And from that moment, we have never looked back.

We have just fallen in love with you more and more every single day (even when you had colic).

And so, Miles, you can see that we love you very, very much. And everyday we are glad to have you with us.

I love you, Miles.

Mommy