13

Thirteen years ago today – at just about this time, too – I was in the recovery room following the emergency c-section delivery of my first child, and I was planning his funeral. I'd just spent two hours in the operating room watching too many doctors scurrying around – cutting me open without regard for how I'd be sewn back together, yanking a big baby from my gut and doing absolutely hideous things to him to get him to just BREATHE.

I held a pillow over my gut as the anesthesia wore off 'cause it felt like my sobs would tear open the incision. Right before they moved me to a room, a wheeled bassinet-thingy passed by and I got to peek at him – buried in tubes and wires. They flew him to the tertiary care NICU across town. A helicopter, just to cross town.

Less than 24 hours later, I convinced the doctors to release me so that I could be with him. "I'll be at another hospital, for Christ's sake!" I screamed at them. They let me go – against their better judgment. They did it because they were certain my son would not survive, and they didn't want to deprive me of the chance to spend some time with him.

I never told anyone how much I bled those first few days. I was afraid they'd make me leave his side. I leaked everywhere: blood from below, tears from above, and milk from my breasts.

I remember the parade of forms – consent forms for various extreme measures: lung surfactants, ECMO, Broviac ... Words no parent should ever have to hear.

I remember how huge he looked compared to all the preemies.

I remember them saying, "Don't get attached. He won't survive to leave the hospital."

I left his side only when forced: when the doctors made rounds, nursing shift changes, and when my husband spelled me for a couple hours so I could shower. During those times, I left a tape recorder there for him – with my voice reading to him. I slept in the rocking chair beside the ... I suppose you'd call it a bed, sorta.

I remember the day I returned after rounds to discover that one of the two ventilators (the "jett puff" one) had been removed and the ugly drainage tube sticking out of his side had been pulled. That was also the day that they told me he wouldn't need the ECMO after all. Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation. In other words, lung bypass. I nearly fainted.

One by one, the IVs came out – but not before he'd blown so many of them that it looked like someone put cigarettes out on his precious skin. They even shaved patches of his thick, dark hair for scalp IVs.

The nurses snuck me food, although eating in the NICU was against the rules. They wheeled in a breast pump every few hours. By the time they started him "on calories" (through an NG tube – oh, 'scuse me, naso-gastric tube for the unscarred), I had over 3 gallons of expressed breast milk waiting in their freezer.

I remember each prognosis – carefully worded pessimism. One particularly callous neurosurgeon said, "It only takes a brain stem to be a baby." One warned, "He'll never even recognize you." (Wanna bet, asshole?)

I remember the hospital social worker pulling me aside to deliver information about institutions: "You can have more children, honey. Place him here. He'll get excellent care. Get on with your life." (As if.)

I remember holding him for the first time – when he was three weeks old – and the entire NICU staff standing around us, crying and applauding.

I remember bringing him home – when he was four weeks old – and, for the first time, nursing him directly from my breasts. (They never did know that I wet my pinkie with breast milk and put it in his mouth at the hospital – while he was "eating" through that damned tube. I wanted him to taste, damn it!)

I remember every damned time he did something that someone said he'd never do.

Ten years later, he was named as one of our community's "most influential citizens."

Today, he became a teenager.