Backstory, part two

When Elijah was born, our midwife handed him to Dan, I think—some of the details are a little hazy at this point. I remember being amazed by how tiny he was. Dan laid him on my stomach, and he just flopped there. No crying, no struggling. He was limp—definitely not the baby who had vigorously kicked anything that pressed on my stomach for most of my pregnancy. Then his color started to change. He was already a little dusky, but he turned purple, truly purple. Dan picked him up again and our midwife started trying to stimulate him into crying; then they took him over to the other corner of the room. Dan started rescue breathing, while my mom called 911.

***

By the time the paramedics got there with oxygen, Elijah was stabilizing and his apgars were really improved. They took us out to the ambulance on a stretcher, then headed to the hospital. The paramedic who rode in the back with us was sweating in short sleeves, while I was wearing my heavy winter coat, fleece pants, and thick socks, and was just warm enough to be comfortable.

***

Dan went with Elijah to the NICU, and my mom, who had followed the ambulance, came up with me. They put me in a room on the maternity floor, and a sweet nurse made a special trip to the cafeteria to bring me some vegetarian lasagna and an orange juice.

And then we waited, and waited. And waited. I don’t remember who finally came and told us, because Dan stayed with Elijah the whole time, but eventually they let us know that Elijah still wasn’t breathing well, and they’d tried and failed to intubate him twice, and the pediatric acute care team was going to come and transport him to another hospital with a higher level NICU. I was in a daze and totally clueless, then. It won’t bear thinking about, now: how much those two failed intubations must have hurt him.

***

So Dan went with Elijah in the ambulance, and I followed in the car almost an hour later, once the hospital staff had finally decided they didn’t have a good reason to keep me.

By the time I got there, they had successfully intubated Elijah, and he was in the hot spot—the bed closest to the nurses’ station, in the Level Three NICU. He had an IV, and a whole tangle of wires coming from his leads, which monitored his heart rate, respirations, and blood O2 saturation. We stood around and looked at him for a while, but by then it was around two in the morning, and since the hospital was kind enough to give us an empty room just across the hall from the NICU, we gave up and went to bed.