Forward March!

Today was Emily’s Christening, which is like a baptism, but no water was applied, as she was baptized in the hospital. Of course, I did the bulletins for today, as that’s part of my job.  These were some of the toughest bulletins I ever had to do.  First, we followed a different order of service than usual for the Christening.  So I had to get that all typed into the bulletin and still not use up too much space.  Second, when I typed that Emily is our daughter and that she was born on April 29 and baptized early in the morning on May 1, it made that entire time come back in one big punch to the gut. 

I’ve evidently put most of it out of my mind so I can focus on going forward.  Today it all pretty much came back.  I did make it through the actual ceremony portion of the service without any tears.  Emily was crying for food, and Kirstin told me in the middle of it, “I have to go potty!”  So I had two excuses to leave the regular service for a little bit while I got myself under control.  Then during the sermon, which was about intersections and how awkward they can be, Pastor mentioned Emily and how she had an intersection already in her life.  He applied it to all of us, how we cross from death into life through baptism.  I had tears in my eyes again from that, but then I cleared up and was good for the rest of the day. 

I’m really hoping to use today as an ending point from all the NICU stuff and a good starting point for the rest of Emily’s life.  It’s like the service today is the last thing we needed to do for her to give her the full “proper” beginning to life.  I don’t necessarily like the word “proper” right there, but I don’t know which other word to use. 

We had a good party out here at our house after church.  We did burgers and brats on the grill, had all kinds of family and friends here, and a lot of good conversation, laughter, and fellowship.  I think every one that was here really needed that time to relax while the kids played and babies were passed around (our friends Jill and Erik have two kids as well, Henry is 10 months older than Kirstin, and Owen is 9 months older than Emily).  So now that we’ve gotten this far, and I’m feeling that I can’t live in the past with this anymore, here’s the full story: 

Emily was born around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 29.  She was a perfect newborn.  I did have to be stuck to the monitors while laboring with her (boo! I wanted to walk around!) because there was meconium present when my water broke, but everything was fine in the end with that.  On Friday evening, Matt was holding her, and noticed she looked rather purple.  He patted her and walked around with her and she went back to normal.  We thought it was an artifact of the lighting in the room, because there were some strange lights in there and strange combinations.  Later, I had just fed her and put her in her bassinet and she did it again.  I immediately reached out to her and picked her up again, and she went back to normal color right after that.  I asked the nurse about it, and she said that all babies do that and it was normal.  That didn’t feel right, but she hadn’t seen it, so we went with it, somewhat grudgingly.  We sent Emily to the nursery for the night.

About 1:00 a.m. I heard Emily cry.  She was the loudest one in the nursery and my room was right across from there, so I could hear her easily.  I started putting my bed up so I could be ready when she was brought to me for a feeding. 

She never came.

I waited.

And waited some more. 

Finally I heard the nursery door open and heard one of the nurses say, “Call Doctor Abler.”

My heart sank somewhere into the depths of the earth and I started thinking, “Oh, please no! Not my baby!”  But I knew it was Emily.  Dr. Abler is our family doctor. 

Finally, a nurse came into my room and told me that they had moved Emily to the ICU so they could monitor her.  She was getting her vitals checked just before her bath and she turned purple on the nurse.  They brought me into the ICU to be with her, and I called home to Matt from there.  Amazingly, he heard the phone.  I had turned off all the ringers except the one in the basement.  He had just woken up and was turning over to go back to sleep and actually heard the phone ring. 

I told him that Emily was in the ICU and that I was waiting to hear more soon. I would let him know when I knew more.  I hung up with him, and fed Emily.  I put her back in the bassinet and she did her chameleon thing again. Her blood saturation levels were dropping.   This time they called Dr. Abler to come into the hospital.  I immediately called Matt again and told him he had to come in, because there was no way I could deal with all that on my own.  Then I called the neighbor to go be with Kirstin, who was in her own bed for the first night since the night before Emily was born.  Luckily at three in the morning, all I had to say to the neighbor was, “Emily is having problems, and Matt has to come in again, can you go be with Kirstin?”  She didn’t even question it, said, “I’ll be there.” And hung up.  It’s wonderful having people around you can count on like that. 

After I made those calls, I had the nurse call Pastor.  Matt and he arrived at roughly the same time.  Once Emily was stable again, we put her on the bed and had her baptized.  That was the only time through the entire ordeal that Matt actually cried.  We both broke down when it came time for prayer.  We couldn’t even pray with our Pastor and the nurse.  Then I held Emily for a little bit, until the hospital staff had to make full preparations for the flight team.  Then I had to hand her over again so that the flight team could get at her right away.  She had to get an IV put into her leg, and the team made other preparations with her as well, including putting on little ear muffs to cancel out some of the noise. 

After Emily left, we did too, so we could go home, pack (Matt) and repack(me) and we headed for the cities.  Emily got to the hospital around 7:30 a.m.  She had one more episode there at about 8:00 a.m.  The doctor called me so I could give permission for her to get a CT scan and a lumbar puncture and to find out when we would arrive.  We told her around 11:00 a.m. because we didn’t know exactly how traffic would be.  We actually got to the hospital around 10:00 a.m. but didn’t make it to Emily’s room till about 10:30 a.m.  Emily was hooked up to a monitor and had an IV going with sugar water and antibiotics. I was able to take a deep breath when I saw she didn’t have any tubes in her.  She was sedated for the lumbar puncture, and was still out from that when we got there.  We talked to the doctor soon after our arrival, and we were relieved to hear they had ruled out heart, lungs, and seizures.  They did an ECG and were giving her antibiotics in case it was an infection. 

And Emily never turned purple again.  After 48 hours in the NICU with constant monitoring, she was allowed to come home.  We had to take an infant CPR course, but that was about it.  That’s just general protocol for a baby coming home from NICU.  So instead of driving 15 minutes to get home, we had to drive 3 hours. 

Now we laugh over portions of that weekend.  The nurses from all over the NICU coming in and saying, “We want to see the big baby with the hair!”  Our amazement at the nurse putting a new IV into Emily and only taking maybe two minutes total to find the vein, get the IV in, and wrap it-- in such a tiny hand.  My amazement at the hotel the hospital put us up in for two nights (plush!).  Matt meeting a high school classmate in the tunnel between Children’s and Abbot when we were coming back from breakfast (he probably knows someone in Timbuktu as well!). 

And now it is time to move forward.  Remember the lessons we had to learn from Emily being in the NICU, feel humble at the awesome power of God, and be thankful for having two incredibly healthy and beautiful daughters.  It’s time to take all that and use it to become different in our lives.  It’s time to plan again, but keep our lessons.  Let life just be, and we’ll just go for the ride.  It’s easier than trying to fight what we can’t change.