Over
the course of the first five years of our marriage my wife had two
miscarriages. The first one saw us lose a little boy at about 4
months; the second was barely a month into term. We soon were made
aware of how common our situation was. Many of our friends told us of
similar experiences and comforted us as best they could. At that
point there was no indication of a medical problem for my wife. She
liked her ob-gyn doctor and trusted him to take care of her.
After
the second miscarriage I did ask her doctor if he planned to do any
tests to identify any possible physical issues that might have caused
these losses and his answer was no. His plan was to do a D&C
and
send her home. About a year later my wife was pregnant for the third
time and we were excited yet anxious, too. After the experiences of
the last couple of years we were hopeful that the third time would
indeed be the charm.
In
early December of that year, I returned home from an out-of-town trip
to find a neighbor sitting with my wife who was in some distress. The
decision was quickly made to go to the ER at the local hospital to
make sure everything was under control. During the ride to the ER we
tried to be upbeat but it was clear that we were both concerned about
the possibility of another miscarriage. After we arrived and got my
wife settled in her room the nurse told me to go on back home. She
said everything was under control. No sooner than I had returned
home and gotten into bed the hospital called. My wife had delivered a
little girl who was approximately 14-15 weeks early. She had been
placed in the NICU and was being cared for there. She weighed 24
ounces at birth.
By
the time I got back to the hospital, the nurses and on-call physician
had the situation firmly in hand. Their kindness and care for the
three of us made a really stressful situation as manageable as
possible. The baby was so small and needed much care. Over the course
of a 76 -day hospital stay our little girl developed a variety of
serious ailments including pneumonia and hydrocephalus. Things looked
pretty bleak for the first month or so. The baby had so many blood
tests that she had to have a series of mini-transfusions. The nurses
in the NICU would occasionally draw small amounts of my O-negative
blood for the baby, something which would probably never be done
today. The protocols and procedures today about donating blood are
now so strict and regulated.
As
Christmas was fast approaching, the nurses tried to do something
special for each child in the NICU. Each of the incubators was
adorned with some ribbon or seasonal decorations. For our daughter
this included going out and purchasing a few doll dresses for her to
wear in the incubator. She was so small that the dresses appeared to
be size XL for a size S body. It was the thought that counted in this
case. We visited the hospital every day and were allowed as much time
to touch and hold the baby as the doctors and the nurses thought
appropriate.
A
situation evolved very early on in the hospital stay that has
remained in my thoughts to this day. When my wife first entered the
delivery area of the hospital the night she gave birth, some hospital
staff members were trying desperately to assemble the first open air
incubator (OAI) that the hospital ever had. It was a rather large
machine with lots of complex-looking hardware associated with it; it
had arrived just that day. The job of assembly looked to be one not
for the faint of heart. The NICU was full of the traditional enclosed
incubators, but the new one was larger and a state-of-the-art piece
of medical equipment. While the staff worked hard to assemble the
device, there was another sick newborn preemie who was struggling to
stay alive. He was born about two hours before our daughter. Sadly,
he did not live long enough to make use of the new open-air
incubator. Had he lived he would have been the one to use the new
machine; he would have been “first in line.” Thus, our
daughter was fortunate enough to be the beneficiary of this new
technology.
This
situation – two sick children, only one of which can benefit
form a new medical device – has haunted me for many years. The
sadness I felt for the couple who lost their child was tempered by
the relief I felt that our child was privileged to benefit from the
new device. I have no way of knowing if the OAI would have saved the
child born earlier than our daughter. I don’t know that the OAI
saved our daughter or if she was just strong enough to survive
anyway. The interplay of life and death at the moment just seemed so
random, a winner and a loser. The situation could just as easily have
been reversed. Emotions of sympathy and gratitude vied for attention.
People deal with similar feelings every day – Why did I
survive? Why was my relative the one who died in the car accident
when everyone else walked away? These are questions for which I find
no easy answers. Friends whom I love dearly have said to me that it
was the will of God that my child survived. This, of course, suggests
to me that it was the will of God that the other child died and I
simply cannot accept this. It seems that the randomness of life is
something that many people are not able to deal with so they seek
other answers.
The
doctor told us that when our daughter’s weight made it up to
four pounds, she could go home, so after a hospital stay of
approximately two and a half months, she was finally able to come
home with us, a day of both joy and apprehension. She did have
significant medical issues resulting from her birth, issues which
remain with her to this day, issues which she deals with bravely. All
of us are fortunate that she is as healthy as she is. The other side
of that coin is the doctor’s decision not to do a more thorough
examination of my wife after the second miscarriage. Had he performed
an exam and surgically corrected the problem before the third
pregnancy perhaps our daughter’s life could have possibly been
much freer of the negative side effects of her early birth. It’s
difficult to know for sure but also difficult not to wonder about.
All these years I wondered why I wasn’t a more forceful
advocate for my wife.
Contact
James
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