The medical team rushed to keep my daughter alive, “Severe pre-eclampsia; blood pressure too high; delivery the only cure; baby too small; lungs not fully developed; shore up lungs with steroids; delay delivery two days; Pitocin to induce labor; Magnesium to slow labor.”
Words swirled like ghosts.
My brain could neither grasp nor comprehend those words – any words.
It was all a blur.
It was too early for my grandson’s birth.
It was supposed to be a magical day – the day of my daughter’s baby shower – but she called me to pick her up at work an hour away. Her body was blowing up.
“Just go to the high-risk doctor,” the obstetrician shrugged dismissively.
5:00 p.m.
Full-blown rush-hour. Traffic stood still. My heart raced.
When we finally reached the hospital, the nurse ushered me to the waiting area shouting, “Triage!”
Inside the hospital room, my future son-in-law sobbed, “It’s not supposed to be this way!”
My son, my younger daughter, and I sat paralyzed.
The room was freezing. Blankets could not touch the cold, but the magnesium used to slow labor caused my daughter to overheat. Without delivery, my daughter and my precious grandson would both die.
When the nurses took my daughter to prepare for delivery, I sat in a chair at the foot of her bed watching the monitors.
Almost immediately after I sat down, the baby’s heart monitor stopped. My grandson’s heartbeat stopped. My heart stopped. Gripped with fear and delirious from lack of sleep, my whole world slowed, then stopped … frozen.
I do not remember how long the heartbeat remained silent, but I do remember a medical team rushed in as one. The second the monitor showed a heartbeat, they started unplugging machines. They gathered the bed, the wires, the monitors, the IVs, and my daughter, and ushered me out of the room — murmuration.
Four minutes later, at 4:24 p.m. on August 8, 2009, my grandson was born – 2 lbs. 13 oz. – no bigger than my daughter’s hand. My daughter sobbed softly, “I’m in love.”
My grandson stayed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for months in an incubator hooked up to so many wires, monitors, and machines it was almost impossible to cradle his wee body. The NICU nurses cared for my darling grandson 24 hours a day in unbelievable ways, keeping him alive with every breath, every heartbeat, every micro-morsel of formula they pushed through a tube in his nose and into his stomach with a tiny syringe, pulling it back out and putting it back in to ensure he was being nourished.
My grandson is a miracle. The medical care that kept him alive is a miracle. The medical possibilities that kept both my grandson and my daughter alive are miracles, and how the team moved together in unison was pure MAGIC!
So much loss happened at once — that year, the years before, and the years after. I have not had a chance to grieve or heal or assimilate and integrate all of the happenings, and I have not been able to speak or write or experience the depths of my grief and my gratitude.
So please indulge me as I now begin again to write. I feel the healing power of words. Creativity heals. Writing heals. Even though my words are perfectly imperfect, they are also imperfectly perfect.
Words are magic! Words heal!
