The Fish Pond: Six Years

Six years ago at about this time I was laying in a hospital bed, and the neonatologist had just come into my room to tell me that my newborn son couldn't breathe and was being hooked up to a ventilator. To top it off, they didn't know what was wrong with him. I was exhausted and in pain, refusing to take the percoset they offered, due to bad previous experience with the drug. The nurses brought me a couple of polaroids of my baby, so little underneath the mask that was keeping him alive.

Earlier that day I'd had an uneventful c-section, which was a relief since I had gone into hypovolemic shock after the birth of my first child. The baby did fine with the surgery itself, but in recovery he kept turning blue/gray, and they sent him to the nursery for monitoring. After they got me to my room, BigDaddyFish went to get the baby, and he turned blue/gray again, so they had sent him to the NICU for tests, telling us to check back at around 2:00.

Two came and went and no baby, so BDF went down to check on things as relatives gathered from all over, trying to watch the coverage of the horror from the previous day, and my grandmother was telling me some sort of story about my cousin who is in the Navy. BDF returned about 30 minutes later, bearing not a baby, but a book. The NICU manual. Over the coming two weeks, it was my lifeline.

My full-term, 8 pound 3 ounce baby boy was the largest in the NICU, and also the sickest. We didn't know for the first week if he was going to make it. He was born on a Wednesday, I went home on Saturday, right after his baptism in the NICU. His right lung collapsed Monday night. One of his nurses, a huge man named Clarence who looked like he'd be more at home as a middle linebacker than taking care of the tiniest and sickest babies, told me not to worry. He said "These big ones, they get the sickest, but you'll see. When he decides to get better, he's gonna get better fast."

Clarence was a prophet.

They had to keep the poor thing sedated, because he kept pulling out his tubes. The regular vent wasn't working after a few days, and they had to put him on an oscillating ventilator, a huge thing that sounded like a steam train under full power was barrelling through the room. But after the lung collapsed and they put in a chest tube, boom! Little Man got better. Fast, just like Clarence said. We took him home when he was 15 days old.

My son is alive today thanks to the NICU staff at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. He is a one in a million case, but there are lots of millions of babies born every year. He is not just alive, but alive. Full of life. I am forever and ever grateful for their expert care, for this precious gift.

Tonight, six years later, on a Wednesday night, our family gathered for waffles and grapes for dinner and cake for dessert. Tonight, instead of polaroids of a sick little thing under a huge oxygen mask, there is a bright, vibrant boy speeding down the street on his brand new Razor scooter. Instead of the NICU book, there are Ugly dolls to hug, fire trucks to play with, puzzles to do, Mighty World playsets to assemble. Instead of pain and sadness and terror with nowhere to turn to escape, tonight there is only love and life and calm.

And gratitude.

Happy Birthday, Little Man. May you have decades upon decades more.