I wish I had been able to blog more in real-time last week. I don't want to forgot those days. Or maybe I do. My head is still spinning with the events of the past 12 days. One day I went to work and somehow didn't make it home for almost two weeks.
The night Lucy was born, around 4:30 am, the pediatrician came into our post-partum room, telling us that Lucy's breathing was too fast and that she'd be spending some days in the Level II nursery. I immediately panicked (and found it hard to process as I had been sleeping, was hours out of surgery, and was probably heavily medicated). I was so upset that she wouldn't be able to be in our room. I felt like I barely held her the night before ... never even made sure she had all 10 fingers and toes.
The next morning I was wheeled into the Level II nursery to see Lucy. It was heartbreaking to see her with her CPAP mask on and all the wires connected to her. I just couldn't believe that I couldn't hold my new baby. Her breathing was so fast, her chest rising sharply up and down with each breath. I spent the rest of the day in a numb state. We received visitors, but each visitor reminded me I didn't have a baby to show off like all the other moms in the other rooms did. That night we were told they wanted to transport Lucy to a NICU at a hospital 45 minutes away as a precaution in case transport became too difficult during the impending Hurricane Sandy. And then things got to the NICU level anyway, so at 4:30 am Monday morning, I was awoken by a pediatrician, nurses, and three people from the neonatal transport team. They had wheeled Lucy in on some crazy looking isolette transporter with plastic windows all around it. I could see she was hooked up to a ventilator. It was possibly the most awful moment of my life to see my baby, with her rapid chest/breathing movements, laid out hooked up to a ventilator and monitors inside that tent, knowing she was being taken away from me.
Monday morning was spent trying to recover and get discharged as soon as possible so we could drive to the NICU to be with our girl and also to beat the hurricane. I was in no way physically recovered from my C-section, but considering the situation, discharge was a must. As we frantically threw things into bags at home and made our way to the NICU, we couldn't shake the utter fear in our hearts -- that we may not get to bring home our little girl at all.
We arrived to the NICU Monday afternoon.On the way down, while trying to brace myself for literal bumps in the road, I read through Facebook comments and messages. There were so many of my friends and family leaving comments on my statuses and then sharing the story and requesting prayers from their friends. Each message made me cry a little harder. When we arrived at the NICU, Lucy didn't look nearly as scary as when I last saw her. She was hooked up the a ventilator and a feeding tube with monitors on her and needles taped to her head. She was having some tremoring they were keeping an eye on. Wes had to run out to make sure we could get a room at the hospital's nonprofit housing facility. After picking up prescriptions for me and a fast food dinner, we spent more time with Lucy in the uncomfortable, outdated NICU before going to our room. Wes and I were both feeling numb, just existing on some sort of auto pilot. I've never seen my husband so attentive to my needs, providing the ultimate care and compassion for my broken physical and mental self. The next morning I called back the mom of a friend who had graciously offered to host us during our stay to take her up on the offer.
The next several days after are a bit of a blur. We spent all of our days in the NICU by Lucy's bedside. At first they couldn't even give us a diagnosis or treatment plan as they tried different testing to weed out other things like pneumonia and infection. By Tuesday night/Wednesday morning they landed on our original diagnosis -- premature lung disease (respiratory distress syndrome)
TO BE CONTINUED.
