That first morning in the ICU was full of shocked doctors faces. I didn't learn until much, much later that my husband was very close to being a widow left to raise two boys on his own. The doctors didn't think David would make it at all. I had lost over 3 units of blood in my hospital room. This was before I was sprinted down to the OR. In all I had to have 9 units. The first report my husband received was that I was okay but it didn't look like David would make it. My husband told me that piece of information 9 months later. When I asked him about how he felt when he got that information he said, "I was so sad for you. You had sat in that hospital bed for 4 weeks waiting for David to come and all of that would have been for nothing. I didn't want to have to tell you that our son didn't make it."
David was a fighter and so was I. No way I was going out. The party was just getting started. In fact after David was born I was a force to be reckoned with. I was hell bent on breast feeding my 32 week old baby. The day after his birth I asked for the lactation consultant to come to my room and for a breast pump to be brought up. The nurses were shocked. They didn't even know what to do with this breast pump thing. They deal with old people in the ICU, not new mothers wanting to breastfeed. I could barely sit up from the pain of my incision but Faithfully I pumped every three to four hours. My preemie was getting the good stuff and no one was going to stop me.
David continued to fight. The tube for breathing was taken out as well as his chest tube. He was now on a C-PAP machine that forced air into his lungs but not as frequently as with being intubated. The only way I saw David was from cell phone pictures. Family and friends had been to see David but I couldn't go. I couldn't get out of bed to a wheel chair and he was still too fragile to be brought down to me. The pain of not being able to hold my baby was unbearable. I remember seeing pictures and wanting to scream, "That's my baby. I want to hold him. I want to be with him. I am his mother. He needs me." I never cried. I wanted to cry. I wanted to sob and sob that I could not hold my baby. Instead I held it in. Stayed poised and kept it together.
David was born at 3:15 in the afternoon on a Saturday. The first time I was able to see him and hold him was around 9 p.m. Monday evening after much begging to my nurses. My brother was visiting and with the help of the nurses they got me into my wheelchair with IV's, pain pump and a Foley catheter along for the ride. I looked like death warmed over. The nurses covered me with blankets and my brother wheeled me up to the NICU to meet my son for the very first time.
The NICU is unlike any other place in the hospital. There is no sterile feeling. People greet you with smiles, the carpeting is fun to look at and the walls are cheerful. David was in the back, the level 3 NICU where the sickest babies go. My brother wheeled me up to David and there he was 4 pounds of pure beautiful. For a while I sat and stared. He was so perfect. In just 48 hours he had gotten through the worst.He was even taking some of the breast milk I had been pumping through his feeding tube and tolerating it well! It really was a miracle. I thought, "Do I ask to hold him? Can I hold him?" The nurse knew what I was thinking and asked those words that wanted to hear for a really long time, "Would you like to hold him?" She swaddled him and handed me this little bundle that fit in one arm. I sat and stared at him, taking in his beautiful little nose and his tiny fingers. This was the moment I was waiting for. It was September 27th. Since the beginning of July I had been worrying about this little person. Would he live, would I live? I was so distraught about the pregnancy that I wanted to jump off the roof of the hospital!!!! All that melted away. David was here now. He was perfect in every way and finally I was able to be there for him.
The nurse that was caring for David that night was also working the day he was born. She was one of the nurses that responded to the call. Just hearing those words gave me the chills. She looked right at me and said, "I can't believe you are here right now sitting in that wheelchair. It is a miracle." The nurse went on to say, "I have worked here for 10 years and responded to 100s of calls over the years. Yours was bad. I have never seen so much blood in my life. Those doctors saved your life and saved David's life that day." What does one say to that. Thank you? It hardly seems appropriate. I knew that my life and David's life was saved for a reason, what that reason was I had not a clue.
David was only 4 pounds but I was so weak that holding him for more than 10 minutes was like lifting 100 pound weights. Sitting up for any length of time was terribly difficult as well. It took every ounce of strength I had to give him back to the nurse. I knew that he would be well taken care of but deep down I knew that me, his mom was really the only person that could care for my baby.
We said our goodbyes and then my brother wheeled me back to my room. One of the hardest things I had to do that night was leave David in someone else's care. I couldn't wait for the next time to hold him and be with him. I was in love.
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