Two months before Johnny was born my cousin and his wife had a little baby boy who had to spend time in the NICU. We were praying for the health of their baby as my pregnancy was coming to it's completion. Then when Johnny was born and we were in the NICU with him, they prayed for us. Bethany was someone one who gave us such beautiful words of encouragement while we were there. Last summer Johnny and Austin got to meet each other and you'd never guess to look at them that they both started off in the NICU! I am so pleased that Bethany was willing to share her story here.
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I
had an easy pregnancy, with no complications at all, and went into labor on my
own on the morning of Holy Saturday, 2013.
I had planned to have a VBAC because I missed the first hour or so of my
older daughter’s life while in recovery after the c-section. With my firstborn, I had to be put under
general anesthesia for the section, so I didn’t see her right away. My husband had already taken pictures and
texted them to family before I saw her face.
Not wanting to miss a moment of my son’s birth, I prepared for a VBAC,
and I got an epidural early on (I had tried to go all natural with my first),
so I wouldn’t have to go under general anesthesia a second time.
You
can probably tell where this story is going.
It was Holy Saturday, and I had just got the epidural when the nurse
noticed that I was running a fever.
“Sometimes that happens with an epidural,” she said. She came back and checked a little later, and
the fever was still there. I think she
had given me a Tylenol, to no avail.
That was the first sign anything was wrong. I was put on IV antibiotics, as a precaution.
Other
than the IV antibiotics, labor progressed normally. There was meconium in the waters, but that
had been the case with my daughter, too, so I wasn’t too worried. My son’s heart rate was a little high, but
not alarmingly so. At one point I
thought I might be headed back to surgery, but my doctor let me keep
going. Around midnight, I started to
push.
As
always when a baby is about to be born, the hospital room filled with
people. The presence of meconium in the
amniotic fluid meant that a team from the NICU must be present at the birth as
standard procedure. I would learn later
that our story is an example of why the NICU team comes every time there is
meconium, even if most of the time they aren’t needed. We are the statistical rarity that they come
for, and I thank the Lord.
The
nurses and my husband were helping me push.
My doctor had arrived, and he was ready to catch my son. “He needs to come out,” said my OB (who I
love). I pushed hard, prayed to God, got
an episiotomy, and boom! My son was born
at 1:14am on Easter morning.
He
didn’t make a sound.
My
OB quickly cut the cord and passed my son back to the NICU team. Two neonatologists and two nurses worked on
him, suctioning his nose and mouth, giving him an oxygen mask. I watched as one of the doctors held up the
umbilical cord straight above his little body and squeezed the blood in the
cord back into his body. The cord had
been wrapped around his neck; he had aspirated meconium; he had an initial
APGAR score of 2.
When
you are waiting for your newborn son to cry, you lose all sense of time. I have no idea how long it was before we
heard his voice. The room was
quiet. My OB doctor and the nurses who
had attended me busied themselves, though I paid them little attention. I tried to read the room for signs to see
whether or not I should panic. Everyone
was so quiet. My doctor had his back to
the NICU team while he waited for the placenta.
I saw him cock his head in the direction of my baby, as if better to
hear. That worried me. Then he cried. Praise God, he cried.
We
named him Austin Immanuel, in part because we had felt (already) that God had
been with us through a difficult time.
The nurses brought him over to me for a hug. He looked beautiful to me. I kissed his cheek. Then they took him to the NICU, where he
would stay for 17 days.
When
I look back at photos of his birth, he looks so sick to me. Immediately after he was born, he looked
puffy and pale. I did not notice this at
the time. Such is a mother’s love, I
suppose.
Then
I started hemorrhaging. I lost a lot of
blood, and my placenta came out in pieces.
I was only dimly aware this was even happening at the time, to be
honest. I am glad I had a medical team
to take care of me because I was in no condition or frame of mind to think of
myself whatsoever.
Turns
out my placenta had gotten infected during labor (hence the fever). Bacteria that lived in my body traveled up
through the broken waters and infected my placenta and my son. It happened very quickly --- so much so it
astounded all the doctors who heard it.
I was not high risk for this. My
waters had only been broken for a few hours, and my son was full term. It was a fluke of epic proportions.
Later,
I would tell my doctor I had found a statistic online that said what we had
suffered had something like a .0008 percent chance of occurrence. “That sounds high,” he would say.
Anyway,
the next morning I was finally deemed stable enough to visit my son. I had seen him via Facetime in the night (my
husband thinks we should be in an Apple commercial for this! Haha). Little Austin was on oxygen, an IV through
his belly button, and several monitors.
We said hello, held his hand.
There was not much we could do.
He was not stable enough to hold him.
They were still running tests and had not diagnosed his infection yet.
Although
I could stay in the NICU all the time, day or night, I found that I could not
handle being there without a break. I
felt completely helpless. I was completely helpless. I had to hand my son over to the nurses, the
doctors…well, to God, really, and trust that through this medical care God was
providing my son what he needed.
It
was three days before I could hold him.
Suddenly, with my son in my arms, everything was so much better. I felt I could handle all this, if only I
could hold him. I felt the effects even
in my body. I could sleep. And immediately, my milk came in. I am still amazed at that.
Later
that day I was discharged from the hospital.
It was good to be home. I found a
lot of comfort in my routine care for my 17-month-old daughter, who was
oblivious to all the stress. She had
been missing me, even though Nana was pretty cool. It was helpful to me to be able to care for
at least one child – there was so little I could do for my son, I really needed
to care for my daughter. I slept in my
own bed, and woke only to pump.
Our
days began to take shape. In the morning
I would care for my daughter and put her down for her late-morning nap. Someone would come to relieve me, and I would
drive to the hospital to see my son. I
got to know the nurses in the NICU (wonderful people). I would hold my son while he slept, or try to
nurse him, or sometimes just watch him sleep.
Some days I spent hours holding him on my chest, skin to skin. Often my husband would stop by after
work. Then we would head home to have
dinner and put my daughter to bed. Some
nights I would go back to the hospital.
But I would sleep in my own bed and be home when my daughter awoke.
And
that was our life for a couple of weeks.
We had lots of help. My mother,
my mother in law, and a close friend all took shifts. I cried on and off. I tried to relax the muscles in my face, but
I never could.
Gradually
my son recovered. First the oxygen tube
came off, then the feeding tube, as he grew strong enough to suck. First a bottle, then the breast. Finally it was just the PICC line left (a
Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter, aka a Super IV J) for his antibiotics.
Finally
one morning we arrived at the NICU to bring him home. Our wait was over, and I felt our new life
together could really begin. My daughter
met him for the first time – what a precious sight! Those 17 days were over.
Since
then my son Austin has grown big and healthy, with no lingering issues. Nearly a year later, I am still so
grateful. Grateful for the doctors and
nurses who saved the life of my son.
Grateful for the NICU, and grateful our stay was not longer. Grateful to leave the NICU with my son
snuggled safe in his car seat. I know
not every mother gets to do that. We are
grateful that his rough start has not left any lasting damage.
Our
time in the NICU has given me a perspective on motherhood that I value. When I think of how much pain I endured in
labor to have that first hour with my son, only to wait instead for three days
to hold him --- all I can say is that there is grief, but the gratefulness
outweighs it. Today we have a wonderful
relationship, my son and I. I don’t feel
that our bond is diminished by our brief time spent apart. I love my son. I am his mother. Those two things, nothing can change.