Part 4...The NICU

After Matt left I sat for quite a while wondering if Em and I had been forgotten about. A nurse came in to take Em's temperature and found that she had developed a slight fever. She left and we waited some more, me trying not to fall asleep on the chair and Em sleeping in her car seat hooked to her stroller with an oxygen mask lying on her chest to give her just a bit of extra help and an IV pole off to her side. After a while another doctor came in to make sure that I had received Em's test results and see if I had any questions. We talked for a minute and I started crying and she asked me if I was ok. I told her that I was just still unsure as to whether I had done the right thing bringing Em in and making her go through all of this. I explained that Matt was NOT happy with the situation and didn't think that she needed to be there and I just felt like I had let my baby and my husband down. She was so sweet. She sat down next to me and put her arm around me and told me that I had done the right thing. She told me that in newborns this young that sometimes the first indication that anything was wrong was finding them dead in their crib. I wish it had put my worries that I had brought her there for nothing to rest but it didn't. It was nice to hear her say that I had done the right thing though.

Finally, around 4:00am a nurse came in and told me that they were sorry that I had had to wait so long, that there had been a few traumas in a row that had come in but now that things had died down they were ready to admit Em to the NICU. I hadn't realized that she was sick enough for the NICU so this just worried me more. The nurse told me that hospital policy states that all patients have to be transported on a bed so I took Em out of her seat and placed her on the gurney as another nurse came in and strapped her to the bed. She looked so tiny on that big rolling bed! I followed behind with the stroller as the nurses pushed the bed through the halls, into then out of the elevator, and through the NICU doors. As we entered the NICU area I was told that I would have to wait for them to register her into their system and give her an initial exam before I could be with her. I took a seat on a wooden bench and watched them roll her away and out of my sight.

It was so quiet there in the hall. I looked around at the pictures on the walls, they were of the babies who had come and go from the NICU. The bench I sat on wore a plaque stating that it had been donated by a family in memory of their little girl. As I sat watching the seconds tick by on a clock and wondering what was happening with Em I saw one of the nurses that had wheeled her up there come out of the exam rooms and start talking to the NICU receptionist. I heard him tell her that one of the traumas that had come into the ER that night was a 4-year old boy that had been hit by a car and bled out. There was nothing they could do for him. I remember in that moment feeling such gratitude that my baby was alive and such sorrow for that little boy's parents. Someone had lost their child that night while I sat just doors away from them wondering what was taking so long. It was heartbreaking.

Soon enough the NICU nurse came to get me and took me back to Em's bed. She explained that Em would be in that bed for 24 hrs as a sort of quarantine and then she would be moved to a proper NICU bed in a room with 5 other babies. I looked at her laying there in just her diaper with tubes and monitors and oxygen and I thought of how sick she was and how much she had been through and how mad Matt was at me and I remember feeling so lonely and so exhausted. I held her little hand and let the tears flow. They assured me that at this point she was very stable and that I should get some rest. The clock now read 5:30am. They showed me to a Family Room where families would stay with their special needs babies to practice taking care of them before they were allowed to go home. It had a pull out couch, a TV, a small fridge and a bathroom. The sweet nurse made up the bed for me and told me that Em was in good hands and not to worry about her.

Here's where it get's kinda funny (and a little embarrassing but it's part of the story so...). Remember, I had thought that we would be going back home that night and had only packed a small diaper bag for Em and nothing for myself. I was still, ahem, bleeding at this point from giving birth and my milk was coming in and was getting to the leaky painful stage. I had no feminine products or breast pads. I rifled through the diaper bag and came up with nothin' in the way of back up so I did the only thing I could think of, I used one of Em's little diapers as a pad and then folded up some paper towels to use as breast pads. Even I laughed about that!

After that was all taken care of and I had prayed for my baby girl I crawled into bed and the tears started again. By this point I was surprised that I had any tears left! I set my phone alarm for 3 hours from then and cried myself to sleep...