It took me a long time to come to terms with Logan's birth. Having my first child be a preemie and spending months in the NICU it was something I never wanted to experience again. With each pregnancy my passion for birth, especially anything related to natural childbirth grew.
With Noah, it was such a positive experience, very fast, very easy. No complications. My end goal was always, a healthy baby. A term baby. Once I hit 37 weeks I would breathe a huge sigh of relief.
After Logan was born his color was terrible so they immediately had to take him over to the warmer and tried stimulating him. I was so exhausted and relieved to have him out I really wasn't concerned about it. We have it on video, he was crying but deep grunting noisy cries. At one point a nurse handed him back to me for only a minute, but then just as quickly took him away again. "That's not a pretty color." She said. My heart sank as I watched her thump his back and rub his little feet. Fear crept in my mind as I realized maybe it was more serious then just taking a few minutes to adjust. Maybe his lungs were premature, and maybe just maybe they would end up having to transfer him to another larger hospital with an NICU.
A nurse practitioner told us they were going to give him some oxygen but that if he kept grunting and didn't show signs of improvement they would call over the on call NICU doctor and they would decide would decide what steps needed to be taken.
I still was holding out that he would perk up and be fine and then would bring him back to me. I told Josh to call his mom and tell her not to bring Bella, just in case Logan still wasn't doing well. Mom and David brought me food and my mom hung my diaper wreath on the door. I felt weak and dizzy. An hour later the NICU team showed up. A doctor came in and sat across from us. "Your son shows signs of lung prematurity." "He will need oxygen and may need to be intubated, and we will give him medication to make him more comfortable."
They went through the endless list of questions, did I drink, any drug use, did I smoke?
"Sometimes, you do everything right and this just happens." The doctor said, other times you have people that smoke, and do everything wrong and have a healthy baby." The next hours were like a blur. The nurse said the doctor who had delivered me would be calling me. He could not have been kinder, he told me he was comfortable with me being discharged and going home that night if I felt up to it. Of course, I couldn't wait to get out of there and over to the hospital where they would be taking Logan. So that was it. A nurse helped me up to the bathroom I put on clean pajamas, signed a stack of paper work, filled out my sons birth certificate and prepared to leave about 3 hours after he was born. I asked to see him before we left, they were just getting ready to transfer Logan by ambulance. A nurse led me into a back room. where my sweet boy was in a incubator that had put in a breathing tube and started an IV. two nurses stood in front of him. The most heart-wrenching thing I've ever seen is a baby crying on a ventilator. You can see the tears, and see them crying. But there is no sound. Just the beep of machines, my poor son was in pain and I couldn't help him. I had made it a point not to cry until then, but at that moment, I just lost it. The doctor said, "Let Mama touch the baby." The nurses moved aside and I held his tiny hand and stroked his head. He was so beautiful. As we walked out into the cool spring night I felt enraged. Why had this happened, why to me? Why?! Not again, my heart was crushed. We drove straight to the hospital and went straight to the third floor, NICU. We picked up the phone to be buzzed in. The smell of the soap made my stomach turn. We had spent three months here when Bella was born, I never thought I would be here again. After hours of sitting with Logan we finally went home to try to sleep for a couple hours.
I climbed into bed and stared at my baby's empty bed and sobbed. "It's going to be alright, it's not fair, but it will be OK, he will be fine." Josh tried to reassure me. Still, there is nothing like the emptiness of leaving the hospital without your baby. Even if it's just for a day. I thought of my own mother, how she had left the hospital years ago only to pick out a tiny gown for her precious girl to be buried in. How had she had the strength to go on, and even try many times again to have a child of her own?
In the morning another doctor called, the diagnosis, possible pneumonia.
I spent the next two days at the NICU and Logan continued to get worse. I sat outside the hospital with Noah in my lap, we had brought him to meet his baby brother. "Baby sick." he said. His worried brown eyes looking down at Logan who was sedated and covered with tubes. He was on a high frequency ventilator then. It shook his whole body. One of the doctors stopped to talk to me, he sat down next to me. "He's very sick isn't he?" I said, "Yes, it worries me when they get like this." I felt numb." "Will he be OK, I mean will he survive this?" I don't know how I was able to even ask him. "He has to." The doctor simply told me. "You must pray." By the end of the afternoon a nurse called us at shift change, the doses of nitric hadn't worked. Logan was still very critical. There was a possibility they would have to put him on ECMO. A machine that provides, heart and lung support. It was the last thing they could do. They didn't have one at our hospital so Logan would be transferred by air to Wake Forest, in Winston Salem. We signed more papers, and I watched as the prepared to take my son. Everyone spoke in whispers, even the tiniest bit of noise, was too much stimulation for such a sick baby. We couldn't even touch him. We drove to my mom's house that day before leaving. The kids had been there for the past two days, and today was Mother's Day. The held up handmade cards they had worked on all day. I kept my sunglasses on and cried so hard I couldn't see straight. "Mommy has to go be with baby brother, he's very sick." They didn't understand, Bella knew her brother was going to another hospital in a helicopter.
If was after two in the morning when we finally made it to the Wake Forest NICU. Josh's boss, who was living in Winston at the time was waiting for us. He offered his condolences and asked if he could do anything to help. Two young women introduced themselves as the on call Doctors. They were in sweats and looked too young to be doctors. They gave us an official diagnosis of Presistent Pulmonary Hypertension, and said Logan had been admitted with respiratory failure.
"He is very critical, but he's not the sickest baby here." "We will only use ECMO as a last resort, and we may not even need to. We just want to be prepared." I hadn't slept in nearly three days, I cried again and a nurse hugged me. "Go try to get some, rest. There is nothing you can do for him now." "We will call you if anything changes." I wanted to hold my baby, to touch his tiny face and hands, to let him feel me. He was sedated and on a Fentanyl drip. Even my hands on him were too much stimulation. Over the next 9 days Logan got better. I cried, and pumped and prayed, and cried some more. I will say one thing for Wake Forest, never have I encountered so many caring souls, the doctors, nurses, social workers for the hospital, even the lactation consultant. Everyone was so kind and accommodating. So quick with hugs and kind words which mean so much in times when there really isn't anything to do but wait.
Logan was getting better, on the 9th day in Winston they began weaning him from his pain medicine, Josh called me ecstatic form the hospital, he had gone in alone that morning while I had stayed with the boys, who had joined us later in the week. "They are taking him off the ventilator, they say he's a rock star, and if he keeps improving they should be able to transfer him home sometime tomorrow!"Later a 30 second video came through the phone. I watched as my son opened his eyes for the first time, and I got a glimpse of his face without the tape to hold the breathing tube in-place. "Logan." Josh cooed in the background. "Hi buddy, your doing really good." Your nose looks just like your brother's, Jack." I cried tears of pure joy and was never so happy in my life. I knew we still had a long road ahead of us but my son was a fighter, he would survive. The very next day he was able to come back to our hospital in Tennessee. He arrived home completely weaned off oxygen. Which I guess he decided he had had enough of on the ambulance ride back. Eating was tricky, he was tired and still recovering from being so sick To everyone surprise and my delight he was able to nurse much more efficiently then taking a bottle of pumped milk. Nearly three weeks after his birth, our sweet baby boy was finally able to come home. I will never forget all the wonderfully, kind family, friends and hospital staff that helped us make it through such an unimaginable time. There really are angels among us. I know that to be true.
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