We had been living with “it could be any day now” for a month and a half. But when we got to September, things seemed pretty stable, and we started to think that we’d be lucky and make it to 32 weeks (Sep. 12th). At that point all her major organs would probably be developed. And if we were really lucky perhaps we’d make it all the way to 34 weeks (Sep. 26th). At that point, her NICU stay might only be a few days. And as hard as it was, we really had a hang of our daily routine, and we felt like we were equipped to go a lot farther.
But early on the morning of September 1st, my wife reported that she was feeling odd. She said it was a similar feeling to the one she had before our first daughter was born. On top of that, the baby’s heartbeat showed some decelerations. And even though my wife couldn’t feel anything, monitors picked up some small contractions. But the nurses said it was nothing to be alarmed about. They said that if my wife couldn’t feel anything the contractions were insignificant, or perhaps a false reading. And there were previous decelerations that amounted to nothing. Still, I spent the afternoon with my wife in the hospital and we were convinced that the baby was coming soon.
But by the morning of September 2nd my wife reported that she felt fine again. Monitoring showed no more decelerations or contractions. She theorized that perhaps she felt strange the other day because the bed rest was taking a toll on her. We had several previous moments where we thought delivery was imminent, so perhaps this was just another. So once again we thought we could still go a few more weeks, and I looked forward to our daily visit that evening.
Then my wife called me at 3:14pm to let me know that she had just went to the bathroom and felt like she was passing a blood clot or something. She was going to call her nurse but she wanted me to be on standby. I anxiously awaited a call back and got my hospital bags ready just in case.
At 3:23pm my wife called and frantically said “I need you here now!” The call dropped. I quickly called her back. “I need you here now!” was all she said again. I heard a lot of people screaming in the background and I heard someone say the word “deliver.” But before I could ask anything the call dropped again.
I quickly grabbed my bags headed to the hospital. I tried calling my wife again but the call went straight to her voice mail. I knew that they were going to deliver the baby, but I didn’t know exactly what was going on, or how long it was going to take. It’s only a 20-minute drive to the hospital, so I held out hope that I’d get there in time, but I had a bad feeling that I wasn’t going to make it.
Once I arrived at the hospital I went straight to my wife’s room, but when I opened the door she wasn’t there. The room looked like a tornado had hit it, and there was medical equipment scattered all over the place. I ran back out to the hallway and shouted at every nurse I could see, asking where my wife was. A nurse escorted my down the hallway towards the OR. I explained that I thought she was delivering our baby and asked to see her. The nurse saw how frantic I was and told me to breathe. She explained that I couldn’t go into the OR to see my wife, and she told me “the baby is already out” and was in the NICU.
My heart sunk. I had missed the birth of my second daughter. And I knew that my wife had been put under general anesthesia and had missed it too. As rotten as the weeks of bed rest had been, and knowing that we’d possibly have a long NICU stay ahead of us, my wife and I were at least looking forward to witnessing the birth. But now that was gone.
The official time of birth was 3:32pm. Amazingly that was only nine minutes after the last call with my wife. I really had no shot to make it there in time.
I was told that my wife would still be out for a while, so I asked to see the baby. A nurse escorted me up to the NICU. When our first daughter was born I was there to witness it and felt an instant connection to her. But this time I had to ask “Is that her?” when I first saw her. We had previously been told that we’d have a few minutes to take photos after birth and before the baby was taken to the NICU. But everything had happened so fast that I missed out on that. She already had several wires hooked up to her, and I made it just in time to see doctors inserting a tube down her throat. Gone was the opportunity to have a nice clean photo to share with friends and family. Still, I took a few photos and some video. I was determined to document everything no matter how it looked.
I was told to expect that she will be in the NICU for about two months, and that there will be some setbacks, but that her long-term outlook is good. She wasn’t able to breathe on her own, but I was told that she actually let out a couple of cries right after birth, which is a good sign. The steroids my wife had been given after she first was hospitalized had helped to expedite the development of her lungs, but they were still about a week or so away from maturing.
After a while I asked when my wife was going to regain consciousness. I knew that she would be upset, and I couldn’t bear the thought of her waking up without me there. So I was escorted to the PACU (Post Anesthesia Care unit) to wait for her.
On the way to the PACU I ran into my wife’s obstetrician. His office is only about four blocks away, and even he couldn’t make it there in time. He told me congratulations and then explained what had happened. My wife likely dilated from zero to ten centimeters in a matter of seconds. This in turn lead to a prolapsed umbilical cord, which is extremely rare -- even rarer that the preterm rupture that brought my wife to the hospital in the first place. Our OB said he had only seen a prolapsed cord one other time in 30+ years. It's a life or death emergency because the umbilical cord is the baby's oxygen supply. There is also a risk for brain damage. In our case, the entire umbilical cord fell out, and the baby dropped down and pressed against it, which made things even more urgent. The baby's heart rate dropped from about 150 beats per minute (which is normal for a fetus) to about 20. They only had minutes to deliver the baby or she would die.
Once the prolapsed cord was discovered, a “code red” was called and about a dozen nurses and doctors had rushed to my wife’s room. They didn’t have time to put her on a gurney, so they wheeled her bed out of the room and rushed her down the hallway toward the OR. A nurse was literally holding on to the umbilical cord and trying to keep it in place. My wife later said it was like she was living the craziest scene you’d ever see on a TV drama.
A few factors made the c-section even more difficult: the baby was in breech position, the placenta was in the front, there was very little amniotic fluid left, my wife had a previous c-section, and there wasn’t the usual amount of prep time. There was a risk of cutting the baby during the procedure, and my wife was at risk for a rupture that would lead to internal bleeding. Fortunately, the c-section was performed almost flawlessly.
Several people told us that if my wife had been anywhere else but in her room, there wouldn’t have been time to save our baby’s life. We were told that if my wife had pulled on the cord, our baby would’ve died. And we were told that there are only two hospitals in our city that have an in-house anesthesiologist. Ours was one of them. Without that, we would’ve have had a chance. And even with everything that we had in place, it was still a close call. After all we had been through, we came frighteningly close to losing our baby. Suddenly the 49 days of bed rest became that much more meaningful. And I recalled a conversation with my wife at the start of the pregnancy as to which hospital we should choose. We both agreed to go with the more expensive hospital because we wanted the best care, and it ended up making all the difference in the world.
Finally my wife was wheeled in to the PACU, just as she was waking up. My wife was in tears and said that she felt that she let me down. I told her that she didn’t, and that she had actually saved our baby’s life by knowing enough to not pull on the cord. Meanwhile, there was another woman in the PACU who had just given birth. She was holding her baby and had tears of joy, and was calling people to spread her good news. Of course, we don’t begrudge her for that, but it was hard for us to listen to her.
We knew that the most important thing was that our daughter had survived, and we kept reminding ourselves of that. But with all that we had gone through, and all that we knew was still ahead, we didn’t feel the joy typically associated with having a baby, and we felt bad about that. We felt very fortunate that we had made it from 23-1/2 to 30-1/2 weeks, yet we were sad that we couldn’t go farther. Our baby had still arrived over two months before her due date, which is far from ideal, and we worried about what problems she might end up having. After being teased by the possibility of a short NICU stay, we were disappointed that she would have a lengthy stay after all. Reality started to sink in that we were officially parents of a preemie.
We were moved from our MFCU (Maternal Fetal Care Unit) room to a Post-Partum Recovery Room down the hall. It’s amazing how much stuff we had brought in over seven weeks. As I removed all of our six-year-old’s artwork from the walls, I strangely felt sad. That room was never warm and fuzzy, yet it had still become like a home to us. And we were leaving it so suddenly.
Later on the night she was born, I went back up to the NICU to see my new daughter. I went up to her and said, "Hey baby girl." She immediately opened her eyes as if she recognized my voice. I started to cry. After all the doubts we had at the start of this ordeal, and all the drama we had earlier that day, I couldn’t believe that she was actually here.
I spent the next four nights in the hospital with my wife. It was really tough on our six-year-old, and she cried to me every day on the phone. My wife’s mom and sister, and some wonderful and loving neighbors all pitched in to take care of her. But she was at the end of her rope and told people that she felt like she didn’t have a Mommy or a Daddy anymore. We feel awful that our six-year-old’s memory of her sister being born will not be a happy one.
At the hospital, my wife became an instant legend. We kept running into people who were there during the delivery, but whom my wife couldn’t remember. Everyone seemed proud to have been a part of our story. Many of the nurses, some who have been there 20+ years, told us that they'd never seen anything like it before. A couple of days after the birth we ran into a doctor we had never seen before. He introduced himself and said that he was the one who delivered our baby. It was a little surreal.
Four days after giving birth, my wife finally got discharged. Her doctor told her that a full recovery from everything she’s been through could take 3-6 months. And while we know she’s in good hands, it was really hard to leave the hospital without bringing our new daughter home. Perhaps the scariest part was behind us, but we knew that there was still a long, difficult road ahead.
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