Originally posted by TheMachine
Our stories really parallel eachother -- my first one, (my daughter) was also born by emergency C-section -- the cord had tangled around her and her heart had slowed, luckily they caught it before it became severe and she was born crying and pink...
Then after giving birth to my son (also by C), my wife had an amniotic emoblism -- an extremely rare an mostly lethal occurance -- it has an 80 percent mortality rate within 5 hours; survivors are generally "scrambled" -- it was basically the same setup with the nun and docs as I described above; only I was by myself wondering if my wife was going to die... luckily, my wife made it through it and recovered fully -- the docs contributed her survival to her extreme level of fitness; she contributes her survival to deep breathing techniques she learned in yoga... then my son coded 3 weeks later after 5 different doctors trips had denied that he had pneumonia and we took him to the ER ourselves...
That's amazing about your daughter -- I can't imagine a baby so small. The tubes and all the medical crap you describe just bring that all back. Nasty, nasty stuff.... And overcoming the odds she did...amazing... sounds like she's a fighter -- just like her dad.
Children are truly a miracle.
Take it easy brother.
I feel lucky to say that my wife had no problems. She went in to labor so very early in the pregnancy, we went to the hospital, and they gave her all kinds of crap to try and stop the contractions. It worked. We were in the hospital for 4 days, being closely watched. The day we were going to be discharged at 9 am, she went into labor. At 6 am that morning... her water broke. The doctor's said there was nothing that they could do now, but do the emergency c-cection. They sliced her open, and literally had to place some of her internal organs on her abdomen, to find the baby. As they began scooping her out, I saw this totally limp, extremely small, purple hand. I was absolutely numb.
One of the hardest parts about the whole thing, was that every single day for more than a month, they told us to love her, but not to get too attatched to the thought that she'd be going home. Her chances of survival were less than 5%. We couldn't take her home. We could just go to the hospital and visit. We couldn't pick her up. We had to put our hands through holes in the side of the incubator to touch her. And even then, we had to be very careful. We couldn't run our fingers over her. Just place them on her. If we were to glide our fingers on her, it could have torn her still-developing skin. She didn't look real. Twice a week or so they'd tell us that her heart had stopped earlier in the day, but she's "doing okay now".
It was an extremely hard roller coaster of emotion to ride on. Excited to see our tiny daughter, then torn up when they talked about complications. She had a valve in her heart collapse, so they had to go in through her neck, down into her heart, to repair it. She still has the scar. She had a blood clot in her brain that almost always proves to be fatal... her just sort of went away. They told us she may have to be in a wheelchair, and she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. 3 weeks later they said she did not have it.
I don't envy what you had to go through. But I do understand. The helpless feelings... the heartbreak... the shock... and disbelief. I would die for my children any day of the week... yet when their lives were hanging by a thread, I could do nothing. My one hope is that I never have that feeling again. My child is going to die, and I can do nothing about it. Worst feeling I've ever had. Worse than watching my brother die 12 feet in front of me. But that's another story.
Take care, my friend. Just after reading your experience, and reliving some of mine... I just want to sit down and read to them, and wrestle, and play... and have them fall asleep on me.
They bring me so much happiness... no matter what else is going wrong in my life.
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I don't think I could handle it.
