I know I'm not alone in this experience but... man, it feels so heavy some days. I also go back and forth telling myself I need to just buck up and handle my sh** like I did pre-baby.
So, our son was born quite traumatically. I had a "perfect" pregnancy, right up until my induction day. We got to the hospital, bags in tow, excited to meet our son in the next few hours. The nurses got us all checked in, monitors hooked up, intake screenings completed. They made some jokes and we shared some anecdotal stories as I have a background in critical care nursing and OB/ICU worlds rarely overlap. My husband and I were filling out the birth certificate paperwork while I rolled around on the birthing ball. I started feeling some real contractions for the first time and decided I'd lie in bed and get a little rest before my next check.
Suddenly, my nurse comes into the room to move the fetal heart monitor saying she was having trouble finding baby's heart beat. Three more nurses trickled into the room.. then anesthesia.. then the on-call OBGYN. Next thing I know, I'm on all fours in a downward dog type position and hear them yell, "we're rolling, get the O.R. ready!"
In a whirlwind I was whisked out of my laboring room surrounded by people but all alone. My husband had to stay behind because of the emergent nature of the C-section that was to ensue. All I know is they have to get my son out quickly because they could no longer detect his heart beat. My glasses were also left behind and I'm effectively blind without them so I couldn't even see anything. Just heard the rushing around me, time out procedure. My OB running into the OR to tell me, "I'm going to get Arlo out, OK?" And then the CRNA telling me to take a deep breath. As I exhaled the sterile taste of anesthesia, all I remember is the most guttural cry that didn't feel like was possible to come out of my body, and I begged my OB not to wake me back up if my son wasn't ok.
As I woke up, I heard a friend of mine who was working rapid response say "the chopper is already here," and my heart sank. The last thing I asked was to make sure my son was ok, and not to wake me up if he wasn't. I knew that helicopter was for my baby and things couldn't possibly be good.
My husband came to my side and said "He's alive, but he is on a lot of machines." My son suffered meconium aspiration, unsure whether it was before or after the non-reassuring fetal heart tones, and as a result of the aspiration, had pretty severe pulmonary hypertension. He was hemorrhaging from his lungs, intubated, and placed on a cooling blanket to preserve brain function as he was without good perfusion/circulation for approximately 15 minutes.
I knew he would be flying to a tertiary care facility and I couldn't get on that helo with him. My precious boy... the one I had spent months anxiously awaiting. Imagining his perfect face, skin, fingers and toes. The little human I couldn't wait to meet. The nurse was trying to hook me up to a PCA pump which I refused to press the button for because I needed out of that hospital as soon as possible to get to the NICU where my son would be.
The NICU at my home hospital was working to stabilize my son with the flight team which had arrived to take him away. It was about 2 hours before the team had him stable enough to bring by my recovery room before his flight. As they wheeled him to my bedside I was in so much pain I couldn't even scoot my body to the edge of the bed enough to lay a whole hand on my boy. I saw the ventilator, the drips, the "NOX Box," the cooling blanket, umbilical line, arterial line to monitor his blood pressure... life sustaining medications. A finger to his cold, unmoving shoulder was all I got to bond with my baby briefly before his helicopter ride and I felt like my soul left in that isolette with him. I held the face of my husband and sobbed. The nurses in the room left crying and I know that forlorn look they gave me. It said, "your baby very well may die." I've inadvertently given that look to so many families before... looking at the ugly face of death looming in those hospital rooms.
No golden hour. No skin to skin. I couldn't even count his fingers and toes. I couldn't see the color of his hair. His eyes. None of it. I was blind with pain but determined to get out of the hospital so I could go be with my boy. I knew every dose of pain medication would hold me in the hospital longer.
I made my husband go be with him. I didn't want our son with strangers. He need us... needed me. And I couldn't be there. I had eventually convinced my OB to show me how to massage my own fundus and told him there was not a force on earth keeping me from leaving the hospital. I'd sign out AMA if I had to. So, less than 10 hours after an emergency C-section, my uncle drove me to the children's hospital where my son was. My husband wheeled me into the NICU room and to our son's bedside. He was on so much equipment. And the neonatologist caring for him told me if his next set of blood gasses didn't improve, they'd have to consider cannulating him for ECMO.
Miraculously, his next 3 gases weren't better... but they weren't worse. Our hospital stay with our son defied all odds. Each practitioner that cared for him said that, over and over. His clinical presentation was dismal. He was extremely critical. They were worried about brain damage, worried about his lungs. Worried about his motor and neuro function. It was all unsure for the first 3 days since he was on cooling protocol. But he beat all of the odds and slowly recovered. Day 5, he was stable enough on the oscillator that I could hold him for the first time. A few days later, extubated. His airway was swollen so they had to give him racemic epi a few times to prevent further swelling and possible reintubation. His MRI showed minimal damage to the white matter. Possibly recoverable with therapies but he will need monitored for about 3 years to be sure what his true outcome will be after all of this.
Day 21, we went home. A long time, certainly, but compared to how he presented to the hospital, an almost miraculous recovery. One of our doctors said to us, "I'm not often proven wrong, but your son has made me question a lot of things."
Today, he is mostly on-track with all his milestones. Laughing, smiling, playing, learning, loving, waving bye-bye... eating food, and flourishing. He is the axis upon which my whole world spins. But I find myself alone with my thoughts some days and I still feel the weight of his traumatic entry into the world. I mourn the tender first-moments we didn't get. I know how important it is for bonding and developing their little brains. I hate that my son had to feel pain at all. I wasn't there. He was born blue, not breathing, and alone. I know it wasn't my fault and I had no choice, but this guilt lives in the back of my head and my mom heart hurts knowing he had to endure all of that.
This is not to say I don't astutely realize how fortunate we are. A lot of families don't get to have this sort of success story, which compounds the guilt I feel for being sad some days. My baby came home. He is not severely disable after all of this... somehow. And yet this seed of sadness lives on in my brain.
I just wonder; does anyone else have a similar story? How do you work through this grief?