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“You’d better come back to the unit. Your daughter’s getting worse. I think we’re going to have to intubate her.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I hung up the phone and cried.
She looked ghastly. Her respiratory rate was well over 70, and her chest and abdomen heaved with each breath. Despite maximal supplemental oxygen her blood oxygen saturations (sats) were only in the low 80s. Dr. Inman explained that although it still wasn’t clear whether the problem was transient tachypnea of the newborn, respiratory distress syndrome or meconium aspiration, if she wasn’t put on a ventilator soon she’d tire out and stop breathing. I gave my consent for the procedure and left the room. I wanted to stay with her, but I couldn’t bear to witness my own child being intubated.
When I returned the tube was in place and a respiratory therapist was bagging her. Her oxygen sats had climbed to 90 percent and her colour was better.
“The procedure went well,” Dr. Inman said. “Right now she’s heavily sedated. You’d better go get some sleep. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow – we’ll be flying her down to the neonatal ICU at McMaster first thing in the morning.”
The Medevac jet arrived at 10:00 a.m. The transfer team consisted of two NICU nurses. Like everyone else who had treated our daughter (now named Ala
A ground ambulance met us at the airport in Hamilton and drove us to the hospital. Ala
The NICU was a brightly lit sea of chaos. Each isolette was like a life raft bobbing in the turbulence. Some of the infants within the isolettes weren’t much bigger than the palm of my hand. It was hard not to stare. I tried to stay out of the way as the transfer team got Ala
To everyone’s surprise, Ala
That afternoon I asked the neonatologist if he had any idea how she was doing cognitively. He said it was difficult to predict such things this early in the recovery phase, but that NICU infants who were able to breastfeed successfully had a significantly higher likelihood of being neurologically intact. He recommended Jan be brought to Hamilton to bond with Ala
The ink hadn’t yet dried on my wife’s admission papers before we were on our way to the NICU. Ala
When we felt we were ready, a nurse led us to an adjacent room and closed the door so we could have some privacy. Jan sat in a chair, slid part of her hospital gown to the side and undid one of the flaps of her nursing bra. She then put our daughter to her breast.
Ala
Ala
Snip, Snip
When I was single I always said I wanted to have eight kids. Eight kids! Can you imagine? I got a serious reality check when our first child was born. Ellen was a wonderful baby, but caring for her was a lot more work than I had anticipated. Feeding, burping, bathing, changing, rocking, walking, entertaining – it was a full-time job.
Kristen arrived 15 months after Ellen. She was equally marvellous, but following her birth our workload seemed to triple rather than double.
Ala
One frisky night about two months after Ala
Jan took them. The next day I visited Miles and requested a vasectomy.
When you’re an MD in a small hospital it sometimes feels weird shedding your lab coat and morphing from doctor into patient, but what’s the sense of driving hundreds of kilometres to undergo procedures that can very capably be performed by your own colleagues? On V-Day I arrived at the hospital bright and early. After registering at the front desk I went to the patients’ locker room and changed into one of those ridiculous Barbie-sized gowns that always leave half your backside exposed. Who designs those things, anyway? As I walked to the operating room, a trio of ER nurses I work with passed me in the hallway.