Chai Tea Sunday (3 page)

A twinge of pain hit my lower abdomen, followed by a light gush when I shifted in the glider. Uncertain of what was going on, I waddled to the bathroom and quickly noticed a pale pink streak of blood lining my underwear. My breath quickened. I wiped myself with a tissue, and found more streaks of light red.

“
Eric
!” I cried, suddenly feeling nervous and sick to my stomach. “Can you come here? I need you.”

Hearing the urgency in my voice, Eric appeared almost instantly. He held the plate of cookies in his hand.

“It's blood. I'm spotting and I don't know why.” I held the tissue up to the light and panicked again when I saw it.

Eric took one look and set the cookies down. He left to get the phone. I could hear him talking to the nurse who was clearly telling him to bring me into the hospital.

“They want to check you out, hon,” Eric said. He rubbed my back and wiped away my tears. “Just think. This could be it! Remember what they told us in our prenatal class. Early labour often starts this way.”

He guided me to our closet and I threw on the first outfit I could find. Eric grabbed the packed hospital bag that was waiting patiently beside my dresser, packed two months earlier, and held my hand as we walked down the steps.

Eric called his parents to fill them in on what was going on as he ushered me towards the car. “Yes, yes . . . I think she is fine. We're just taking her in to check her out. Plus the nurse thinks it could be the onset of early labour. I'll call you as soon as we know anything more.”

“Slow down!” I cried as Eric peeled out of our driveway and raced down the street. My knuckles turned white from holding onto the car door so tightly. “I know we need to get there, but we aren't going to make it if you crash this car!” Ignoring me, Eric blew through a red stoplight. I cranked my head to look behind us, hoping that I wouldn't find rotating cherries on top of a police car. I didn't, and Eric kept his foot securely pressed on the gas pedal.

About halfway to the hospital, my lower abdomen started to contract and I knew I was in labour. The on-call baby doctor, who introduced herself as Dr. Marlow when she walked into the room where Eric and I were waiting, checked dilation and quickly agreed with my self-diagnosis. Despite being a few weeks shy of full term, our baby definitely wanted out.

Putting her hand on my knee, Dr. Marlow explained that, typically, a woman in such an early stage of labour would be sent home. It could be days of labour before Ella actually made her grand entrance. But Dr. Marlow wanted to watch me for a few hours to check my progress.

It was at the precise moment that Dr. Marlow was explaining all of this that my water broke in a huge gush, making the linens I was lying on sopping wet. “Well, looks like you just bought yourself an admission. This is the real thing!” Dr. Marlow smiled. “Let's take a quick look on the ultrasound to assess final position and we'll go from there.”

The nurse wheeled in the portable
L&D
ultrasound and squeezed the familiar jelly — this time
not
warmed — onto my aching abdomen. She narrowed her eyes at the black and white
TV
image before her. She frowned. Every muscle in my body matched the contractions that were going on in my gut.

“What is it, Dr. Marlow?” Eric asked, his hand squeezing mine a little too tightly.

“Looks like your baby is breech. Frank breech, to be exact,” she responded, her eyes still squinty and focused. They never strayed from the ultrasound picture. When she appeared to feel confident with her image interpretations, she removed the transducer from my belly and wiped away the gel.

“What does that mean?” I asked. Sweat beads lined my forehead and I struggled to breathe through a heightened contraction.

“There's nothing to worry about at all, but your baby is upside down. She must have turned last week and now her bum is where her head should be. A vaginal delivery with a breech baby is risky so I'm going to book an
OR
and give you an urgent C-section. It is a very routine surgery and it will happen very quickly. My guess is that your baby will be here in the next hour or two, depending on when we can get a room. I'd call your folks or whoever else you might want to be here. This is really it.”

Eric squeezed my hand again, but this time it felt lighter and more excited. “I'll go call our parents and tell them to come now. You okay if I leave you for a few minutes? I can't get reception in the hospital and need to step outside.”

“Yes, yes . . . you go call them. I'm clearly not going anywhere.” I smiled at him, wanting to take in every moment of the milestone. In front of Dr. Marlow Eric gave me a long kiss on the lips, which made me blush with embarrassment.

Fifteen minutes later, Eric returned along with the nurse who had been put on my charge. She introduced herself as Nurse Nancy, which I knew Eric would have found amusing in a different situation, and told us that she needed to take me — without Eric — so that I could be prepped and given my spinal. Eric would be able to join me once I was completely frozen from the waist down and the thin blue curtain that we had seen in almost every episode of
Grey's Anatomy
had been set up to separate us from the blood.

I waddled to the
OR
and was introduced to the on-call anesthesiologist, Dr. Tam. Nancy helped me on the operating table and told me to sit on the side and round my back so that Dr. Tam could stick the needle in my spine. She promised to stay in front of me so that I could prop my body up against her and hug her shoulders.

“The biggest thing is that I need for you to stay completely calm and remain still,” Dr. Tam murmured from beneath her surgical mask, as though it should be easy breezy to stay perfectly still when curled over a protruding, pregnant belly and someone is about to stick a six-inch needle into your lower spine.

“Squeeze tighter,” Nancy instructed. “It's okay, honey, it will be over soon.”

And so it was. Within moments, almost the entire surgical team, who had entered the room while the needle had been in my back, were helping turn me over and get me into position. “We have to go quick,” Nancy explained. “We only have a few moments before you will be unable to move.”

When Dr. Marlow was satisfied that I was completely numb from the waist down, they called in Eric, who had changed from his street clothes into head-to-toe hospital scrubs, including something that looked like a big, blue shower cap on his head. He walked through the small operating room and took his position at my head. My arms had been spread out and strapped down on either side of me, my body making a big
T
position on the table, and Eric reached out to take my right hand in his.

Although I felt no pain, the intense tugging and pulling going on inside of me was severe enough to make me wonder if the ring of fire that accompanied natural births would have been better. I had no idea what they were doing, and didn't want to know, but it felt like someone the size of a Mack truck was doing a line dance on my stomach and lungs.

“Here she comes,” Dr. Marlow called out over the blue curtain, only minutes after the surgery had started. I was shocked at how quickly things were moving. “Give me about one more minute and your daughter will be here.”

“This is it, Nic. We're finally going to be parents,” Eric whispered into my ear. “I love you, baby.” I tried to take in the moment, but my brain would focus on nothing but the obese line dancer jumping all over my belly and preventing me from being able to breathe.

“Here she is!” Dr. Marlow held our beautiful baby over the blue curtain and we got our first glimpse of our angel. She was red and puffy with icky, white vernix all over her bald head. And she was perfect. “She is definitely a girl!”

The doctor handed Ella to the nurse who whisked her to a table about six feet from my head. I cranked my neck in an attempt to get a glimpse, but couldn't see anything more than the nurse's back. A few pink blankets were being thrown around, but I couldn't get a glimpse of Ella.

I strained my ears to hear her cry, but heard nothing. I waited some more, but only heard my own heart beating in my brain, its sound echoing into my eardrums.

“Eric? Why can't I hear her?” I tried to move off the table, but got nowhere. The pressure on my gut had ceased, but my body was still filled with lead and I couldn't move a millimetre, not to mention Dr. Marlow was still putting me back together and stitching me up.

“
Shhh . . . shhh
. It's okay. Ella is with the nurse, who knows what she's doing. I'll go have a look.” Eric gave my hand a squeeze and went to stand beside the nurse, who was hovering over Ella. He whispered quietly with her, before returning to my bed to retake my hand. “Ella is breathing on her own, which is great, but she's having a bit of trouble, so the nurse is going to give her some oxygen. She said that babies often don't cry when they're born by C-section. Makes sense though. Right, Nic? Many times they are sleeping when the doctor reaches in and lifts them out, so they barely make a noise. Ella is in good hands, doll. She'll be okay.”

Yet I could see the doubt registering on Eric's brow. He also felt the unspoken medical diagnoses that had been dancing around us since Ella's birth. Something wasn't right, but
what
we did not know. Without needing to say a word to each other, I knew both Eric and I were wondering whether or not the doctors were aware of the problem and not telling us the update — or if they were completely unsure themselves.

After about two minutes of the nurse working on Ella, a second one joined her. From what Eric told me, they were aggressively rubbing her all over, trying to get her blood moving and her breathing stabilized. Five more minutes passed and the nurses told Eric that they felt Ella should go to the nursery. “It's just a precaution,” the nurse who had joined Nancy explained. “She'll be in a better place in the nursery where we have more available to us to get Baby's breathing under control.”

It irked me that the nurse wasn't calling our baby by her name. From the minute she entered the world, we had given her the name Ella, and the nurse had heard us calling her by her
name
.

The nurse continued, “Dad can come with Baby, if you'd like, or he can stay here with you. Whatever you'd like.”

“Our baby is Ella. Would you mind calling her by name, please? And Eric should go with her. I'll be okay.” I grimaced, pain starting to hit my body, but not from the staples being punched in by Dr. Marlow. “Go, go, Eric . . . I'll be fine. Please, I want you to be with her.”

Eric squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek before hurrying off in his head-to-toe hospital scrubs. He followed the nurses who were wheeling Ella in a baby cart — lined in a multitude of pink blankets — out of the room and down the hall to the nursery.

Caught up in my own rampant hurricane of thoughts, I didn't even notice that Dr. Marlow had finished the surgery. I was lifted by a medical team of four onto my hospital bed. They wheeled me into the recovery room, but said nothing. I was grateful for the silence. I couldn't speak and I didn't want to.

After an eternity of waiting, Eric joined me in recovery and told me Ella's breathing had improved slightly, but still wasn't where the doctors wanted it to be. They had intubated her, and she was in an incubator.

“Dr. Lorel, the pediatrician on call, has ordered blood work so we can better understand what is going on. They said they will come and get us once they have the results.” Eric squeezed my hand again. “Your parents are in the waiting room, and mine are on their way. She'll be okay, Nic. She'll be okay.”

“I'm scared,” I squeaked out, interrupting him. The voice coming from my throat wasn't my own. “And I'm supposed to be holding her right now. She needs her mommy.”

“I know, baby. She'll be with you soon. Right now she's in the best spot possible for her. Dr. Lorel isn't leaving her side. And we'll know more soon.”

“Can I see my mom?” I asked, suddenly wanting no one but my own mother to hold my hand.

“I'm sure it would be okay, given the circumstances. I'll go to the nurses' station to make sure. You sit tight.”

Eric returned with my mother in tow. She walked straight to my bedside and gingerly took me in her arms, kissing my head, careful not to strain my post-surgery body. “I know, sweetheart, I know. It's very scary. We're all scared. But Ella is with the best doctors and nurses, who are taking great care of her.”

She let go of her hug, and took my right hand in her own. On the other side of my bed, Eric took my left hand and the three of us waited together, linked by hands, until the doctors came to give us more information.

The doctor who had been watching over our baby girl was a man about my mother's age. He had a thick neck and green eyes. He walked through the recovery room door and frankly handed us our fate, albeit gently.

“Your baby is struggling. We've intubated her, but she isn't responding in the way that we'd like. She's going through some cyanosis, which means she has some blue colouration in her skin and mucous membranes, caused from the higher counts of deoxygenated hemoglobin in her blood vessels.” The doctor cleared his throat, and continued, “I ordered blood work, and we learned that the albumin levels in her blood serum are abnormally low, which is something called hypoalbuminemia. I say that word in case you hear other doctors speak about it. Your baby is also severely hypoglycemic, meaning that she has drastically lower than normal levels of blood glucose. And she has coagulopathy, meaning that something is going on in her body to prevent proper blood clotting. We're concerned given that the coagulopathy has increased her susceptibility to bleeding. We need to carefully monitor that.”

Eric dropped my hand. My mother held on. The doctor continued, “To be honest, we don't know what is going on right now. We'd like to transfer her to Mount Sinai and admit her into the
NICU
for continuing intensive care and more tests. They are better equipped to handle her medical condition, and she'll be transferred by a specialized neonatal ambulance that is already en route from Mount Sinai to pick her up. You are more than welcome to go with her, or you may stay here to recover. If you go, you will need to be transferred by a second ambulance at a later time. But, please, know that wherever you are and whatever you decide, your baby will be getting the best possible care with the physicians at Mount Sinai. They are some of the top doctors in the country.”