Big Girls Do It Pregnant (18 page)

I looked at Caleb, nestled in Jeff’s powerful arms.
 
“Let’s switch,” I said. “I want to hold him now.”

Jeff slipped his hand under Niall in my arms, lifted her free, and for a moment had both of his babies in his arms. His smile in that moment was one of absolute joy. I saw his phone denting the breast pocket of his scrubs, so I reached up and grabbed it out of the pocket, pulled up the camera function, and took several pictures of my husband holding both of his children. He settled them both in my arms, and I felt the same look of contentment wash over me. I saw Jeff snapping pictures out of the corner of my eye, but I had eyes only for my babies. Niall, on the left, drowsing now, eyes closing, hands lax against her chin, Caleb on the right, fussing noisily, mouth working open and closed, hands waving and little fingers flexing.
 

Such tiny fingers. Everything about them was just…so small. So fragile. So perfect.
 

Jeff took Niall from me, and then Sheila brought me a bottle. I held it to Caleb’s lips, and he nuzzled it with his mouth but didn’t take it. He cried louder, his mews of hunger turning to wails of anger. A drop of formula touched his tongue, and he wailed even harder but refused to take the nipple of the bottle. Sheila showed me how to encourage him to take it, teasing his upper lip with the dripping tip. After several tries, he latched on and began sucking, his cries silencing.

“Will I be able to breastfeed them?” I asked.

Sheila stood back, watching him drink. “Yes, of course. For now we need to be able to monitor how much they’re eating, though, so we’ll have to continue to bottle-feed them. They both have to be at least four pounds, eight ounces, and able to drink an entire bottle at every feeding before they go home. We might have you try to breastfeed them the next time they’re hungry, just to see how they latch on.”

“How long will they be here, do you think?” Jeff asked.

Sheila shrugged. “It depends, really. A few days at least, maybe a week or two.”

It wouldn’t end up working out quite that easily, though. I didn’t know that then, of course.
 

Chapter 9: JAMIE

A week and half had passed since I’d had Samantha. She’d done well enough after birth that they’d sent her home, but now, as I held her in my arms, I worried. Her legs were mottled various shades of red and pink, splotches of color and paleness alternating like the patches of a jaguar. She seemed to be struggling to breathe, sucking in hard for each breath, lifting her chin to gasp for air. Her shirt was hiked up around her armpits, and I watched as her stomach dipped in with each breath, distending with each exhale, her diaphragm showing at the inhale.

Something was wrong.

Chase was out on the back porch of Kelly’s house, where we were staying until we got the okay to drive home to New York. The sliding glass door was open, and I could hear the start-and-stop guitar of Chase writing a song. I glanced back down at Samantha, her sleeping face looking distressed.

Kelly sat down on the couch next to me. “How are we doing, Mama?”

I looked at her, and I knew my worry was stamped on my face. “She looks like she’s having trouble breathing.”

Kelly took Samantha from me, resting the baby face up on her legs. She pressed her thumb into Samantha’s skin, watching as the thumbprint remained for several seconds before disappearing. She pushed up Samantha’s shirt a bit more and watched her chest retract and expand with each breath, tilting her watch upside down to time the space between breaths.
 

Kelly turned to me with concern in her eyes. “I think you need to take her to the E.R., Jamie. I don’t have an at-home pulse oximeter to measure it, but I’m pretty sure Samantha’s levels are low. It could be RSV.”

That was a word I’d heard tossed about before they let us bring her home. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but I knew it had something to do with her breathing. “Will she be okay?”

Kelly wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. “You need to take her to the hospital to get checked out, sweetie.”

I picked up Samantha and held her to my chest. “Get Chase, tell him what’s going on. I’ll get Sam in her car seat.”

Within minutes, we were making the short trip back to Beaumont. Chase dropped Sam, Kelly, and me off at the emergency entrance and went to park the car. We were hustled to a triage room almost immediately, probably thanks to the fact that the nurses all knew Kelly. Chase joined us shortly thereafter, and then after more than thirty minutes, a young Indian man in a lab coat—looking too young to me to possibly be a doctor—checked over Samantha, almost cursorily.
 

“It is RSV, there is no doubt. She is not yet coughing or wheezing that I have seen, so it does not seem to be bronchiolitis as yet, but that is my worry. Her pulse-ox is seventy-four, which is very worrisomely low. It should be one hundred, or very close to it.” He traced a fingernail along her diaphragm, which was visible at every inhale. “You can see here that she is having to work to take in breaths. I am going to admit her and have her taken up to the pediatric ward.”

I struggled to keep my tears of panic at bay. “What can you do to help her?”

He gave me a serious, compassionate look. “Unfortunately, at her young age, there is nothing we can give her beyond saline and a little very diluted oxygen. She is too newly born to be given steroids or anything like that.” His faint accent lilted at every other syllable. “We will monitor her, and we will do everything that we are able to keep your daughter healthy.”

After an hour’s wait, a nurse showed up to take us to the pediatric ward several floors up. My heart pounded, and I had to focus on deep breathing to keep from breaking down. Chase’s hand in mine was a lifeline, warm and solid and comforting. It was all that kept me sane.
 

The room was tiny, barely ten feet wide and fifteen long, split in half by a thin curtain. Against either wall was a huge crib that could be converted into an incubator. A well-built male nurse in his thirties with sandy blond hair cropped short and a day’s worth of stubble on his fair skin greeted us warmly. He introduced himself as Brian, and said he’d be our nurse until shift change in four hours. He spent several minutes with Samantha, checking her over himself, familiarizing himself with her chart, taking her temperature, listening to her breathing with a stethoscope, changing her from her own clothes to a hospital onesie that allowed him to attach monitor leads to her wrist and and a pulse-oximeter to her big toe.
 

That was what broke me: the sight of my baby, not even two weeks old, with a miniature cannula inserted into her nose and trailing over her shoulder, red and green wires with monitor leads taped to her wrist, an oximeter pinching her big toe, glowing red. I collapsed backward into a plasticky leather recliner, buried my face in my hands, and sobbed. Chase didn’t try to comfort me beyond a heavy hand on my shoulder.
 

“I know it’s scary to see her like this,” Brian said, “but she’s going to be okay. We’re going to take great care of her, and you’ll be home as soon as possible.”

I nodded, barely hearing him. It didn’t seem like it was going to be okay. Samantha lay in the crib, swaddled in a blanket with the lead wires trailing out near her shoulder, eyes narrowed but open. Her little mouth was partially open, and she was visibly struggling to draw in breath. I could only watch her, eyes burning with unshed tears, and try to breathe for her. I sucked in a breath as she did, let out mine with her, as if I could lend her my oxygen, as if I could heal her with sheer force of will.

Hours passed, streaming by like water, then stopping to creep by in a sludge-slow crawl. I sat in the chair, watching Samantha try to breathe, ignoring Chase’s attempts to call me. At some point, Kelly left. Each labored breath in caused my heart to ache.
 

I was completely helpless.
 

I didn’t notice him leave, but at some point, Chase shoved a styrofoam cup of khaki-colored coffee in my hands, too hot, burnt, too sweet, but exactly what I needed. The only sounds were Samantha’s breathing, now laced with an occasional wheeze, and the incessant coughing of the baby on the other side of the curtain. When Sam coughed for the first time, I cried again.
 

There were no windows and no clocks, no way to measure the passage of time. It could have been midnight; it could have been noon. We’d left for the hospital around four in the afternoon, I thought, but wasn’t sure. Chase was antsy, bouncing his knees, sitting in another chair drawn up near mine, continually running his hands through his hair. Then he began humming, mumbling, standing up and pacing the few steps down the length of the room and back, clearly caught up in something in his head. He left the room, and I heard him ask the nurses at the station for a pen and pencil, and then he returned and resumed his seat on the edge of the chair, scribbling on the pad of paper furiously.

I didn’t disturb him, knowing he’d share it when he was ready.

Abruptly, he stopped pacing, facing me. “I’m supposed to be onstage in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, right now,” he said.
 

I wasn’t sure what his point was, so I just stared at him, not trusting myself to not completely lose my shit at him.
 

“I had this song for Samantha just pop in to my head. I need to get it out.”

I just nodded, glanced at Samantha while chewing on my nail.

He took a breath, then started singing
a capella
. The melody was a lullaby, lilting and sweet and kind of haunting and quiet.
 

“I can’t breathe for you,

My darling,

I can’t hold you close enough.
 

There’s nothing I can do,

It doesn’t matter if I’m strong or if I’m tough.

Because there’s no way for me to imbue

Any of my strength into you.

I can only watch and pray,

I can only stand and stay
 

In this room close by your side,

Praying to a God I’ve long denied.

You’re so tiny in that bed,

My darling,

You’re so pale, and, god, so still.

And I can only watch and pray,

I can only stand and stay,

Wishing your body wasn’t ill.

I can’t breathe for you,

My darling,

There’s just nothing I can do.

But I’m here, just the same,

Praying over you, I’m watching over you.

I can’t ever hold you close enough,

My darling,

I can’t ever be strong enough.

But I’ll always, always try,

I’ll comfort you when you cry.
 

I kiss away your tears,

I’ll quiet all your fears.

I can’t breathe for you,
 

My darling,

I can only watch and pray,

I can only stand stay

In this room, close to you.”

By the end of the song, there was a crowd around the door, nurses, doctors, parents, orderlies. Chase’s voice had never sounded so sweet or so soulful. He’d poured his heart into that song as fully as if he’d been on stage in front of thousands of people. When people realized the song was over, they seemed unsure what to do. Clapping seemed inappropriate to them in this setting, I think, but they knew a performance when they saw it. In the end, they scattered one by one, and Chase and I were left alone with our sick, sleeping daughter.
 

Chase swayed on his feet, stumbled, fell backward, and landed in the chair, scrubbing his face with his hands almost violently. When his shoulders began to shake, I realized he’d finally cracked the façade of his composure. I left my chair and knelt on the floor between his knees, still sore from childbirth but uncaring of my own discomfort in that moment. I pulled his face against my breast and held him, just held him. He only allowed himself a few moments of shuddering, silent tears before he breathed a harsh, gusting sigh and sat back, wiping his face.
 

“I don’t know what came over me,” he said, “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t you dare apologize,” I said, cutting in over him. “Our baby girl is sick, and there’s nothing we can do but wait. You’re allowed to be upset.”

He nodded, rubbed his face again, breathing deeply. He pulled me onto his lap and I curled up into him, resting my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, watching the gentle rise and fall of Samantha’s labored breathing.
 

At some point I dozed off, and was woken by a wet hacking cough coming from Samantha. Chase was asleep as well, head lolled back uncomfortably on the chair.
 
I slid off his lap and stood over Samantha, taking her hand in mine. She curled her tiny fingers around my index finger and held on tight, cracking her eyes open to peer at me. Her face scrunched up and she coughed again, a wet, wracking cough that tore my heart to shreds.
 

A nurse came in, a different one now, a pretty woman in her thirties with blondes-streaked brown hair pulled into a bun. She introduced herself as Laurie and gently but firmly insinuated herself between me and Samantha, placing her stethoscope over Samantha’s chest and listening as she coughed.

“I know this cough sounds really horrible,” she said, turning to me, “but she doesn’t have any crackles going on, and her pulse-ox is holding steady right around eighty. She’s not ready to go home yet, but I don’t think she’s getting any worse. We’ll keep the oxygen on for now, and if you notice a lot of drainage clogging her nose, you can clean it out.” She showed us how to do that, squirting some saline into her nose and suctioning it out with a green bulb syringe.
 

Samantha absolutely hated this process, kicking and screaming and flailing, but she seemed to breathe easier after it was done.
 

More hours passed. My birth-sore body protested the long hours in the same position in the chair, watching the monitors, watching her pulse-ox fluctuate from seventy-two to eighty-four, but never any higher. Chase eventually left, returning with a couple of pre-made sandwiches, bags of chips, and bottles of soda from the cafeteria.