Clark's Birth Story | Part Two. | A Beautifully Wrecked Life

If you haven’t read Part One yet, you can do that here.

After surgery I was taken to a recovery room and monitored for a while. I began vomiting (a standard reaction to anesthesia for me), so I had to be in recovery for a bit longer so they could monitor my vital signs. My blood pressure was normal, the post-delivery bleeding was normal, and the oxytocin was working to contract my uterus. Blaise stayed by my side as we asked for frequent updates on Clark. The nurse called down to the NICU and found out that Clark had been put on oxygen after “needing a little help breathing” (we later found out that he had actually stopped breathing altogether and had to be resuscitated). I was crushed, but she assured us that he would probably still meet us in our maternity suite that night.

I was finally wheeled into my room a couple of hours later, transferred to my bed, introduced to my nurse, and told to get some rest. When I asked about Clark, they told me that he still needed to be on oxygen, but he could probably come up in a few hours. Blaise and I were left alone to rest, which definitely did not happen. For hours I tried to sleep, to no avail. Blaise went down to the NICU a few times to see Clark, take pictures of him for me, and update me on his condition. All night I waited for them to bring him up, and all night he remained downstairs.

Throughout the night, as I waited for an official update on Clark’s condition from his doctor, I began experiencing the emotional crash as I finally absorbed what had happened. It’s very difficult to explain, and maybe even harder to understand if you’ve never been where we were, but I began to feel some intense emotions. There was a tremendous feeling of grief over the end of my pregnancy. I LOVED being pregnant and I was not ready for it to end so suddenly. All night I would think of my baby, reach down to rub my belly, and realize that my womb–as well as my arms–were empty. That would initiate a flood of tears and bring Blaise running to my side.

In addition to mourning the abrupt end of my pregnancy, I was also mourning the loss of a natural delivery. Throughout the entire pregnancy, I had really looked forward to labor and delivery. I was excited to go through something that women have been experiencing since the beginning, and I felt like my c-section robbed me of a true birth story. There would be no intense moments of laboring through the pain, of feeling Clark’s entrance into the world, of having a sense of tremendous accomplishment. I felt like I had been cheated out of something that meant so much to me.

I also felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. I kept replaying the last few months of my pregnancy in my head, analyzing everything I might have done to caused this. I felt like it was all my fault that Clark was in the NICU struggling to breathe. I knew without a doubt that the high blood pressure I’d battled throughout months 7 and 8 were very likely the cause, and I blamed my faulty body. After a miscarriage last year and then not being able to carry Clark to term, I felt like a failure as a woman. I kept apologizing to Blaise, who wouldn’t let me take any blame, but the guilt was still there (and still is to some degree).

And of course, there was unbelievable joy that we had become parents, but joy coupled with incredible sadness that I was in my maternity suite with an empty baby cot. I was reminded of the fact that my baby wasn’t well every time I heard another newborn down the hall wailing, or when the nurses came in to give Clark a bath only to find out that he wasn’t there, or whenever I looked in the direction of the empty bassinet.

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I had just dozed off into a light sleep when a splitting headache woke me up. My heart was racing faster than I’ve ever felt and it hurt my head to open my eyes. I yelled to Blaise, “Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong! Get a nurse!” He bolted out of the room and got a nurse, who paged the on-call doctor. He came up in and asked me a series of questions, took my blood pressure, and told me that he would call my OB. Eventually my OB came in, assessed my symptoms, and took my BP again.

I was diagnosed with preeclampsia that morning and immediately put on medicine to bring my blood pressure down. He explained that it’s likely that the preeclampsia was already developing before the birth, but finally showed up afterwards. He also explained that there’s a pretty close link between high blood pressure and placental abruption, so the question of “why” was finally answered.

Later that morning, Dr. Michael (Clark’s ped), came in to give us a full update on Clark’s condition. He had officially been diagnosed with Respiratory Distress Syndrome (RDS), which is caused by immaturity of the lungs and insufficient surfactant production. He explained that because Clark’s lungs hadn’t produced surfactant yet, he was laboring very hard to breathe and with each breath his lungs were collapsing. My heart shattered into a million pieces as he walked us through what the next days and weeks would look like. We would give Clark a few days to see if his lungs would produce it on their own before intervening (the process to administer surfactant is pretty traumatic), and then it would likely be a couple of weeks of weaning him off of oxygen and ensuring his stability before he could go home.

By 10 am, I was becoming hysterical at the fact that I still hadn’t been able to see or hold my baby, so I started begging the nurses to remove my catheter so I could go down to the NICU. Finally they did. I was wheeled down at around noon, and seeing Clark for the first time did a million things to my heart. I fell completely in love with him when I saw him, and my arms literally ached until they placed him in them; however, I was devastated when I first saw him. He was on oxygen and with each breath his entire chest caved in. I sat holding him for the first time for close to an hour before I began to feel incredibly ill. Because of the preeclampsia, I was quickly wheeled back to my room, put back in bed, and told to rest.

The next few days were the darkest days. Clark continued to need assistance breathing, and was quickly moved from regular oxygen to a CPAP machine, given a feeding tube, and put on an IV for hydration, antibiotics, etc. We were also no longer allowed to hold, or even touch, him for the remainder of that week. I absolutely could not cope with our situation. This was far from what I expected, we were so far from family, and we were dealing with cultural barriers on top of everything else. I stayed in my room crying much of the time, as each short visit to the NICU would further crush me and raise my blood pressure. I began pumping so that Clark could at least get my breast milk, an act which became the one thing I had control over and could do to help him.

We had kept pretty constant contact with our family and with EV, and we knew that there were hundreds of people back home warring in prayer for Clark’s life and healing. Blaise and I begged and pleaded with God, but I also struggled with the same questions that always crop up when there is great suffering: Why are You allowing this? Why don’t You just heal him? Why didn’t You prevent this in the first place? Haven’t we been through enough this year? They are, of course, questions that I didn’t get answers to, but I wrestled with God about them anyway. While I was angry that He he had allowed this, I also knew that He was with us in the storm. The phone calls, the hospital visits, and the emails that we received from friends and family were a tremendous comfort…not to mention the constant reports of prayers going up for our sweet baby boy. He had not abandoned us.

The days that followed became a blur, but I remember that on Thursday Clark had to be taken to another facility to undergo an echocardiogram, because the doctor heard a murmur when listening to Clark’s heart. The echo confirmed that Clark also had Patent Ductus Arteriosis, which occurs when a hole in the fetal heart does not close at birth, placing enormous strain on the heart and lungs. A medicine was administered to stimulate the closure of that hole. On Friday, the doctor said we couldn’t wait for the surfactant any longer. That night, Clark was intubated and the surfactant administered. He remained on a ventilator after the procedure and we entered a “wait and see” period.

That same Friday night, the pediatrician once again walked us through a new possible timeline: 2-3 days on the ventilator before being weaned off, then another couple of weeks of being weaned off of oxygen altogether, a few days of being observed to ensure his condition is stable, and then he would finally get to go home. At that point, it looked like Clark wouldn’t be coming home until very close to his due date in August.

While the struggles weren’t over, what we once again didn’t know was that God was about to blow us all away and put Clark in the category of the “few miracle babies who defy the odds and get to leave the hospital much sooner.”

Part Three of Clark’s birth story to follow.

Tuesday: The first time I got to hold my baby.