Distress and Relief (If I Could Breathe for Him)

This is a paper I had to write for Writing 115 during summer term. We were instructed to write about an event in our life. I can't remember the exact assignment but I chose to write about Cain's birth.I left out the moments before the birth. I only wrote about his birth and the week after. So, here it is.

In the moments after my son Cain was born I knew something wasn’t right. When they laid him on my chest and rubbed him clean he wasn’t acting like a normal baby would. There was no squealing. His skin was an abnormal purple. The nurse took him off me and did the standard evaluations they do when infants are born. He just lay there limp, still not squealing, still not the pink flush of a normal newborn. The nurse pulled his leg away from his body and he jerked it back right away. This reaction seemed to concern her. She started to rub him and to give him a bath. Then the nurse laid him back on my bare chest and told me that sometimes being with mom helps. “Helps what?” I was wondering. I knew at that point something really wasn’t right. He was working too hard to breathe.

When the Neonatal Intensive Care nurse came, he took one look at Cain and told me he was taking him to the NICU. He would be under observation, but wouldn’t be admitted until the doctor saw him. I was stuck in a room with nurses I didn’t know, in a situation I couldn’t control. My husband followed Cain to the NICU and was there when he was admitted. The diagnosis was a lung condition called premature lung disorder, which is a full term baby who has under developed lungs and cannot dispel the fluid from them.

When I was wheeled into Cain’s tiny but private room in the NICU, my husband sat there, face full of tears rocking what looked like a tiny emphysema patient. The tube forcing air into my son’s lungs through his nose was tiny; a smaller version of some older person’s oxygen tube. There was a board strapped to his arm to keep his arm straight so the IV would stay in. There were wires and tubes that seemed so complicated and adult. It was far too adult for such a new life, too serious for such a tiny baby. As my distraught husband sat there rocking this little android type person, he tried to explain to me what the nurses and doctors had told him through his sobs. I didn’t want to hear any of it. I just wanted my baby to breathe. I would have given anything for him to breathe. I would breathe for him if I could.

Every day we spent waiting for improvement, sleeping at night in hard hospital recliners shoved in the corner of that tiny room, meeting new nurses on new shifts till we knew each one by their first name. Everyday my husband told me he just wanted to take him home. Every day I told him we had to wait, and that only time would help Cain. By the third day finally, Cain was off the forced air and on normal nasal prongs that didn’t force him to breathe, but provided a higher level of oxygen than normal room air. By the fifth day he was off the prongs. We were ready to take him and leave. On that fifth day, they started the process of “graduating” Cain from the NICU. Running tests and making sure I knew how to install a car seat as well as evaluating his ability to breathe while sitting up. He passed these tests. With every new improvement it almost became harder to wait to take him home. We had to fight our urges to pack up his stuff and just walk out that security monitored door. Our hearts were ready to be done with aching. The ache became less on that sixth day when the doctor came in the room and told us there was no reason why he shouldn’t be able to go home the next day. It seemed in that moment, that all the terrible experiences faded away. All I could think about was taking him home even more than I had in the days before. That sixth day was the breaking point in my emotions, but in a good way. Things were truly o.k. The sadness was gone. The ache had subsided. All I felt was a terrific anxiety. Working through what I had been through with this tiny little being that looked at me with all the love in the world had made me realize how much I needed and wanted him. Going through this hard time made all my doubts I felt while pregnant of wanting this little “parasite” completely vanish. It was as if I had never had those doubts to begin with.

On the seventh day, after they took his “newborn” pictures in his Winnie the Pooh overalls and the red mark he had on his forehead from the gadgets he had strapped to his head, I signed the discharge papers I had been waiting to sign for what seemed a lifetime. I put his tiny little body in what seemed an oversized car seat, handed over my NICU parent pass card, and walked out the doors and didn’t look back.