Princess,
As you must know, my thoughts and prayers are with Madalyn. Please let her mom and dad know that I am also asking MY prayer group and support group to pray for her tomorrow...Wednesday.
Will you also please share this story with her parents?
**********
My daughter was born in October...her due date was December--Christmas to be exact.
In August, I knew something was wrong and tried to tell my young doctor, but he wouldn't listen and kept calling it "hormones." Finally one day, I KNEW something was VERY wrong and I drove myself to the emergency room. Thank God I listen to my intuition or my daughter would now have survived. I had a tear and the amniotic fluid was slowly draining away every day; and the ambilical cord was wrapped around her neck.
I was IMMEDIATELY placed on flat on my back bedrest, and I mean immediately. Once they laid me down in the E.R. to examine me, I never got up again. I was literally flat on my back and could not even roll over--if I did, it would have cost my daughter her life. I could not sit up to watch TV or read...could not go to the bathroom...and I had to lay as still as I could to try to keep as much amniotic fluid as I could to give her time to develop. I stayed like that, flat on my back, with pillows by each side to keep me from rolling in my sleep, through all of September and most of October. Every day the doctors did tests on my daughter to see if she was developed enough to survive, to see if there was enough amniotic fluid, and to see if the cord was choking her--day and night.
Then, one day, after they did their tests, the doctors came in and said, "You're having your baby today." I was shocked! What?? They said her lungs were developed enough to be healthy, but the amniotic fluid was starting to fill with bacteria--so they had to balance the lungs vs. the danger of infection--and today was the day. Within about 1/2 hour I was prep-ed for surgery and had a c-section. She was born! She was 5 lbs, and she cried like a kitten, but she was pretty big and she was alive.
She was in the NICU for about a month. The first several days were rough, because she was too young to really cry, and she didn't know how to suck. No seriously. The nurses in the NICU had to teach her, and I have no idea how you teach a newborn to suck! We fed her breastmilk out of a 1 oz. dropper with a nipple on it that dropped milk into her mouth. It looked like a large syringe! She was jaundiced, and they had her under lights, but they put big, black patches on her eyes so it wouldn't seem to bright to her. There were tubes EVERYWHERE but she hardly seemed big enough to have VEINS much less I.V.'s. She was also on pure oxygen (because of her under-developed lungs) and had a heart monitor because her heart kept stopping. Want to know a WEIRD trick? If a baby's heart stops, often you can startle it to start again by flicking their foot with your finger.
Anyway, I went home without my baby. That was strange and felt so empty. She was on an "every-other-hour" feeding schedule, so it was exhausting, but I was pretty much there at the NICU all the time. I'm just a little peanut of a woman myself, but when I held her with her behind in the palm of my hand, her head was about half way up my arm. She was pretty darn small! It was pretty darn scary!
But guess what? She graduated from the NICU! She even got a T-Shirt (no kidding): "I survived the NICU at XXX Hospital" <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" /> Before we could bring her home, both my H and I had to be CPR cerified, know how to work her monitors, etc. etc. It was more grueling than medical school! But she got home, and she started to grow. And grow. And grow.
That was 13 years ago. Today she is a BIG, STRONG, HEALTHY young lady. When she gets a cold, it immediately turns into bronchitis...and she has a WICKED sounding cough! But other than that, she is perfectly healthy and fine. It's a miracle. She is taller than I am--bigger--faster--she's even the right fielder for her Little League team and all her teammates are boys!
So take heart. It is so scary now, but those NICU nurses REALLY know what they're doing. They are loving, dedicated people who will care for your Madalyn like no other. She is in the best of hands. And her future need not be one of illness and difficulty. Maybe she will have a difficult start like my daughter did, and hopefully she will grow up a strong, tough cookie like my daughter.
Just have faith in the nurses and in God, and take heart--one NICU parent to another.
CJ
