After Wren was born we had three wonderful hours with her, until she took a turn for the worse. The NICU doctor, at her birth hospital, met with us after taking a look at her lung x-ray. He told us by looking at the x-ray, he thought she had some fluid in her lungs caused by being born so fast. He told us they would take her to the NICU, put her under an oxygen hood, monitor her breathing and hopefully get us all home together, two days later. We followed Wren and the nurses as the took her down the hall and across the hospital to the NICU. We then met the nurses that would be taking care of her that evening and watched as they stuck monitors to her and drew blood from her, put her under the oxygen hood and under the bili light.
Before Wren was born, we had asked for no hospital visitors the first day, and for my parents to keep Ephraim (our 4.5 yr old) until we asked them to come, later in the day. Ephraim had the best day with my parents. They made him feel so special, and made Wren's birthday, Big Brother Day for him.
You can imagine his confusion when he finally got to the hospital, to find me in a bed empty handed.
I will never forget him asking over and over... " Mommy where is baby Wren?" "Why is baby Wren not here" "I want to see baby Wren, I want to see her RIGHT NOW!!".
We all tried to explain it to him the best we could. NICU visitors at our birth hospital had to be over 12 years old, so for the next three days Ephraim wasn't able to meet his sweet sister.
Day One was all a blur.
I remember crying, pumping milk to take to Wren, more crying, going down the longggggg hall to see her multiple times and the strangest sleep I have ever experienced, that night.
The NICU nurses told us that if there were any changes through the night they would call us. When we didn't receive a phone call over night I expected to greet a baby who was doing much better.
That wasn't the case..
When we arrived to see Wren on Day Two, she was still under the oxygen hood, but was requiring a much higher oxygen rate than before, her blood gasses were not good and her sats were extremely unstable. The doctor met us and told us that he would be giving her a surfactant treatment that day. He seemed to think the problem was that there just wasn't enough surfactant (Surfactant, a naturally produced substance, is a kind of foamy, fatty liquid that acts like grease within the lungs. Without it, the air sacs open but have difficulty remaining open because they stick together. Surfactant allows the sacs to remain open.) in her lungs, and this replacement therapy would help her condition immensely. She would be given three doses of the artificial surfactant throughout Day Two and we were told that IF it worked she would be much improved by Day Three.
There isn't a lot I remember from Day Two, aside from sitting bedside looking at Wren, but not being allowed to touch her. I remember wanting to talk to her, but not really knowing what to say. It was an awkward situation with the nurses literally breathing down your back, in our tiny cubical, of a room. I wanted so bad to speak life to her, to pray for her harder than I have ever prayed before.
but I didn't...
