Two days ago a new preemie was wheeled into the NICU. This happens all the time when I’m there. The nurses, doctor and respiratory therapist all hover over the baby, who is so so small he cannot even be seen, his body hidden on the other side of a crumpled up blanket.
He looks like a 24 weeker to me. I fear for him.
“I remember when your little guy was the fragile flower of the unit, and now he’s a big boy,” says his doctor.
I tell the nurse that I feel nervous being so close to such a tiny, early baby. I ask when we will be moved up the hallway, where the intermediate babies are.
“It brings back bad memories, doesn’t it?“, she replies.
That baby, his skin purple and gelatinous, is gone. The nurses cannot tell me what happened to him. But I can feel it. I know.
It’s in the tears that fall from the nurse’s face as she bottle feeds a baby. She’s been doing this for 40 years. But I doubt it gets easier.
Three and a half years ago, Daniel got an RSV-like infection that landed him at UCD Children’s Hospital for almost three weeks, 10 days of it in the PICU and 7 days of that on a ventilator. During the second week when Daniel was actually getting *better*, one of the kids on the unit died. I was talking to the unit social worker about it and she immediately jumped in and told me not to give in to the fear. (This was also the woman who brought me yarn and crochet hooks from her stash and told me that she had better see a scarf out of me before Daniel left the unit. God bless her — Mom and I went to Michael’s the next day and got yarn for a blanket to crochet for Lent that year.)
That must be such a hard to place to be and to work. So joyful when things work out, but so, so, SO heartbreaking when they don’t. It must take a special person to be a nurse there for decades. : (
I agree…how they can work with the tiniest of babies… I don’t know how they get an IV in a vein the size of a thread.
And what’s worse how they can send fragile babies home with parents that they know are probably incompetent.
When you think about the fact that some babies are born prematurely because their parents do risky things… Drug use and what not… it’s disturbing
Wow, I bet that was so frightening… Does Daniel have ongoing lung issues due to his prematurity?