Most birth stories begin with a birth, because that is the focus– the drama– the pivotal moment: this emergence of new life. I’d assumed ours would be the same way. It was all I prepped for in the last few weeks, and now, despite how miraculous the whole thing was, it pales in comparision to the minutes and hours and days after.

I didn’t know how much of this to disclose at first. Not only is it terrifying, it’s so– incredibly personal. It doesn’t have a happy ending yet, and that is the hardest thing to admit, and makes it that much harder to share. We are absolutely humbled by the amount of love and support we’ve recieved over the last 36 hours. Really. Everyone says that, but it has genuinely moved us how many people care about our family and the little daughter they have yet to meet. I wanted to write this down to involve those people who have involved us; to let them into our thoughts since they have kept us in theirs. And I wrote this down for me. A strong optimistic part of me really believes that she will be fine in the end, and that the mother’s amnesia will take over and I’ll forget most of this and the way it happened– that it’ll become one of those funny stories (“You gave us quite a scare! The End.”) and a list of numbers you can recite offhand (“12:38, 7 pounds, 1 ounce, 20 inches.”).

Friday morning I woke up for a scheduled induction. We kissed Elias goodbye, packed him up to visit Sharman, got the camera ready, filled her bag with diapers and pink blankets, and headed to the hospital. Checked in. We were nervous, thrilled, ready. 7:30 was sign-in. By 8:15 we were in a laboring room. At 9, the doctor stopped in. He checked me (2 centimeters, 90%), and decided the induction was favorable. My water was broken, pitocin was started. Jason left to call immediate family and friends to let them know she was on the way. Most people we got through to– a few numbers were busy. Valerie wanted to drive up from school, about two hours, to be there when Addie arrived, so Jason gave her the okay.

By the time Jason got back in the room, I was having hard contractions. When Amanda gave birth last month, it was so quick that she almost didn’t have time for an epidural, and I wasn’t going to make that mistake. The anesthesiologist arrived. Epidural was set. I could feel all the tension in the contractions now, but none of the pain. The nurse looked at my read-out and suggested Jason not leave the room again– just in case.

Valerie arrived at 11:30. I was 4 centimeters. About twenty minutes later, the nurse came back; her brow furrowed. “Are you having any pressure?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “I don’t think so.”

She checked me. “Okay, you’re a good 8. I’m going to call the doctor in a little while and give him the heads-up.”

I nodded. Valerie and I laughed. Jason played his PSP, content.

About ten minutes after that, I announced: “I think– I think I might be feeling pressure. I think I need to push.”

This was surreal to me. The first epidural with Elias had been so complete that I couldn’t walk afterward, much less feel any actual birth sensation. This epidural had been purposely toned down. I don’t know what I expected to feel, and I thought it would be some magical womanly thing, Needing to Push, but it was mostly just pressure and sort of awkward, like a watermelon sitting in the pelvis. At first I felt bad for troubling the nurse again so soon, but when she checked a minute later, she offered: “We need the doctor now. Hold on.”

Everything is blurry from here. Addie hadn’t dropped down fully, and my nurse– who was Jean, I want to remember that, even though her nametag said something else– Jean, who was sweet and the first nurse I loved in a long line of nurse affairs over the next day– asked if I could try to push, just once, to see if she would drop. I did. Jean put her hand up immediately: “Stop! Stop! She’s there! SHE’S THERE!”

The doctor arrived. Valerie stood at the head of the bed, so as not to view the carnage, and Jason held one of my legs while Jean held the other. Time.

One push: Addie began to crown. Nurses chat in the background. One mentioned my red pedicure while she held my feet, and the other was impressed.

Two pushes: Addie was stuck. Her head emerged, with the umbilical cord wrapped twice around her throat.

Three pushes: The nurses are in early panic. The doctor says HARD NOW, we need to get her out, we need to get the cord out. I can feel everything. There is so much pain and I am screaming and Valerie and Jason are watching, awestruck and scared, holding their breath and pushing along with me. I am pushing as hard as I can and she comes out, a little more, and they unwrap the cord.

Deep breath.

Four pushes: Her shoulder is caught in my pelvis. Valerie teases me about this later, but all the stories I hear about babies’ shoulders breaking during delivery or mother’s hips shattering come flooding back. Try not to focus on it. Pain. I am pushing and pushing and I CAN NOT BELIEVE HOW BAD THIS HURTS. I assumed that all the agony would be from delicate parts stretching. No. It was the pressure on the bones that was so overwhelming. Bones do not give. One arm comes out.

Five pushes: Jason and Val are encouraging me. The nurses are pushing on my stomach, hoping to help the baby out. The room is tense.

Six pushes: Addie comes out, and the RELIEF, and I am sobbing and the doctor puts her on my chest, bottom-first, and I see right between the legs and we all laugh and I’m saying, “It’s a girl! It’s a girl just like we thought!” and Jason touches her head, and I touch her head, crying, and I keep repeating: My little girl, my little girl, my little girl…

They clean her off and weigh her. Jason is deliriously happy. He stands next to the bassinett and talks to her during the first few minutes. Valerie and I are looking at each other, grinning. She is astounded I just gave birth. I’m astounded I just gave birth. “Seven pounds!” Jason announces from Addie’s side. “And she’s so beautiful!”

“Good baby– perfect baby,” the doctor says as he works away with the final Becca clean-up.

This is where most stories end.

This is where I thought we were done with the hard part. We were going to recuperate in our hospital room, Elias was going to come in a few hours and visit his new sister, our friends were going to fawn over her. I had to focus on me now and healing. It was over, we thought.

Jason went outside to call our friends and family. The nurse brought her to me, and I nursed Addie for the first and only time so far. Valerie helped– switching her from one side to the next– since one of my hands was still hooked up to an IV and immobile. Jean whisked away our daughter right afterward. I ate some ice chips. Time passed. Val and I laughed and looked at photos on the camera. Jason returned. We were all glowing.

I was transferred to the postpartum area. Jason, Valerie, and I waited in the room until Addie was brought to us. Nothing happened. Finally, about two hours post-birth, I asked if Jason would mind running down to the nursery and actually getting her; because I wanted to see my baby. He nodded and headed out.

Thirty minutes passed. I told Valerie I think Jason got lost, and she said, “Where? It’s just one long hallway,” and we were cracking up and I said, “Maybe he’s still outside the door. Just standing there.” It was so funny to us that we were still giggling by the time my husband opened the door– without Addie.

“Hey!” I greeted. “Where is she?”

“Addie is– having some problems breathing,” he answered slowly. “She’s been transferred to the neonatal intensive care.”

I blinked. NICU? Sick babies were in the NICU and I just saw Addie, who had great APGAR scores (8 and 9), and who was pink and rosy and looking at us with her dark dark eyes, curious. “What breathing problems? How bad is it?”

And then came the answer that has been the answer since: “They don’t know.”

Addie, for some reason, wasn’t taking oxygen fully into her lungs. Out of 100 percent oxygenation, she would drop as low as 60. The first diagnosis was that it was a problem with her lungs: that she still had amniotic fluid in them, or possibly pneumonia. Both were okay and treatable. Tests were being run. We would know in an hour. Valerie ran out to Quizno’s and brought us back food.

We called NICU at the half-hour mark. They said wait the full hour. 29 minutes later, Jason called again. We were told to come down.

Good news: the lungs were clear and healthy. Bad news: she was still having “episodes”, which was their word for it, and a term that changed from one hospital to the next. They were looking at a possible heart problem. A pediatric cardiologist was coming down to look at her. She would need to stay in NICU for at least 48 hours. She would not be coming home with us, and no one could see her– not even Elias, who had been talking about “the baby” nonstop. She would probably need to be fed some oxygen in the meantime.

The cardiologist came and ran an echo on her heart, which was basically an ultrasound. Good news: it wasn’t her heart. Bad news: we were now looking at the brain. A CAT scan was ordered, and we were told– again– to wait.

Jason and I at this point were devastated. It was only 6 in the afternoon, and five and half hours after she arrived. Valerie was in the room, waiting. We told her what we knew. Ate a small amount. My father and several girl friends visited to offer support, even after being told there was no baby to meet.

After our visitors left, J and I held hands and walked down to the NICU. As soon as we stepped in the door, a little doctor intercepted us. He called me by my full married name. He said the results were back, and they needed to be discussed.

There was blood on her brain, we were told. It was probably the cause of this, but nothing was certain. She was going to need to be transferred to a larger children’s hospital, one of the best in the country and luckily within an hour’s drive. It was going to happen tonight, and we needed to sign some paperwork.

We asked questions. We got some vague answers. They don’t know. No one knows. Will it require surgery? Don’t know. Is it fatal? Don’t know. “It’s rare,” the tiny doctor replied. “This is rare. We see blood spots on the brain sometimes, but they are usually from vacuums or forceps being used in delivery, which wasn’t the case here.”

It was so hard to process this. I hadn’t slept, I had barely eaten, this environment was so foreign and movie-like, and I knew something was wrong and Jason knew and it was like a horrible nightmare that I kept closing my eyes and hoping to wake up from.

We watched her sleep and held her. She would stop breathing and go blue, then need an oxygen mask. I sobbed and sobbed. I kept whispering in her hair, My little girl, my little girl, my little girl.

I thought my emotions would be hardest to process, but the hardest hardest part was seeing Jason– who I love more than I can imagine any wife ever loving her husband– hold his daughter and tell her how beautiful and special she is and see that incredible bond that he had made– that this was his Addie; the way Eli is my little man. I don’t know what it is that makes mothers especially protective of their sons, and fathers especially protective of their daughters, but it is there and definite and undefinable.

It’s hard to write this. It’s harder than I thought it would be.

Deep breath.

We were exhausted and told to rest. Jason wanted to go with her to the hospital, since I couldn’t. They said it was fine. They would call when she was being transported. We went back to the room and I climbed into bed and J got the sleeper chair.

The nurse on duty came in to check my vitals an hour later. In another hour or so, we were woken to sign more forms– in case Addie needed a blood transfusion, in case she needed surgery. It was dark outside and the flourescent lights in the hall were all I could see. I felt so isolated in that room. Jason slept on.

I’d just made it back to sleep again when they came to get us to see off Addie. Trudge to the NICU. She is inside a little incubator, which looks surprisingly safe and comfortable, and she is still pink and cute. “She looks so good,” Jason breathes. The crowd of people nearby assure us that she is gorgeous and will be in great hands. The driver even introduces himself– an earnest, kind-faced boy who is maybe a year older than me– and promises to get her there safely.

Jason is told not to follow immediately. They need to situate her first, so get some rest and come a few hours behind. He is disappointed but agrees. We go back to the room. Jason sleeps. I sleep.

I am stirred by a nurse who asks if I still intend to breastfeed. “Yes,” I whisper, half-delirious. “I wanted to.”

“Well, you need to start pumping, or your body can forget you had a baby.”

She brought in a little machine and attached it securely to my chest, and it made this weird suction like what I imagine cow milkers do, and I wanted to wake Jason up to show him how funny it was– the nursing machine– but it wasn’t funny, really, and all I could think about was my body forgetting and I could hear the cries of newborns with their mothers in other rooms down the hall. I look at the photo of our family in the NICU that the nurse took earlier and printed for us, and I sob. I look at the photos of Elias that Jason keeps on his PSP, and I sob. I miss my children so badly that I think my heart will be crushed by grief.

That was the worst moment, and I can pinpoint it.

Time meanders by. I need to pump every two or three hours, as if Addie were here, so every time I drift off to sleep a nurse comes in to hook me back up to the machine, and I need to sit up to do it, so I have to be relatively alert. Jason comes to around 4 in the morning. He calls the NICU at the new hospital. Addie arrived safely. She hasn’t had any episodes in the last few hours. He can drive up if he wants, but will need to leave by 6:30 for a shift change– roughly an hour after getting there. We discuss it. Jason decides to wait and see if I can be released first thing, and we’ll go together.

By 8, we are both ready to leave. Sharman has Elias, who is sad and missing us, and she says if we come pick him up, the four of us can visit Addie together. Plan is set. I walk down to the nurses’ station and say pleasantly: “Hi, I had a baby yesterday at a little after noon, and she’s been transferred, and I was wondering if there was any possible way to get released?”

The nurse knows who I am. She knows about Addie. She says she will get me out of there as soon as humanly possible.

This is the amazing difference between the two hospitals: in one, we were The Only Case. Ours was the only NICU baby, we were the only young couple who were suffering. There was a single room to treat the intensive needs babies. In the children’s hospital, NICU is an entire floor, and there were probably upwards of thirty of forty babies in incubators all lined up next to ours, with other husbands and wives clutching hands and watching the monitors intently.

I am discharged less than 21 hours after giving birth. We drive to our apartment, which is still and solemn save Lola the crazy dog. Shower, change. Pick up Elias.

Eli screams, “Mom and Dad!” when we walk in the door, and then asks where the baby is. We tell him she is sick and needed to stay at the hospital. He nods. He shows us the Baby Einstein they’re watching, which has “egs” and “appuhls” and “moos” on the farm. I can’t believe how much I missed him. I don’t know if it helps or hurts to watch him play; healthy and oblivious.

It takes an hour or so to get to the new hospital, which I was worried we wouldn’t be able to find, but was instead shocked by the sheer size of it: four blocks long and probably ten stories high. Sharman hangs out with Elias in the NICU waiting room, and Jason and I visit Addie. She is still glowing. Jason holds her first. Again, his intense devotion to her moves me. The nurse says she’s “doing well” and the doctor will “fill us in”. We wait. Another man in blue, a soft-spoken Asian (which has been the majority of doctors so far, including the tiny one who gave us our first results), starts by templing his fingers and throwing out new terms:

Seizures and brain damage.

He says her apnea (the stops in breathing) is caused by the blood, which is likely irritating her brain and causing the seizures. They are mild, we are told, even for babies; but she is on medication nonetheless to control them. There is a good possibility she sustained some brain damage, but they can’t be positive or know the extent. There is a good chance even with damage, we will never know. He tells us the Good Outcome Stories, about children who could still play the piano and went onto college and blah blah blah with much worse brain trauma than this. He doesn’t want us to think she’s going to be– you know– “retarded”, he whispers to us.

Jason looks at me like he wasn’t even assuming she was going to be mentally handicapped, but thanks for bringing it up.

The doctor finished with: “We need to keep her under observation for a while. Maybe four to six weeks.”

Four to six weeks. We will have to wake up every day and see her empty crib for four to six weeks. I will have to pump for my baby instead of having her next to my breast for four to six weeks, and for four to six weeks we won’t be able to enjoy same duties that most new parents complain about: someone else will feed her, change her diaper, hold her when she cries in the night.

We go out to see Sharman and I break down. The other parents in the waiting room look at me empathetically. Jason takes his mom back to meet her new granddaughter, and I take our son for a walk. We stop at a big window seat, and Elias eats animal crackers and drinks orange juice, and we talk, and I tell him about his new sister and show him photos on the digital camera.

Jason and Sharman find us a few minutes later. We go down to the lobby, and Sharman buys Eli a present “from the new baby”: a plush toddler briefcase (which Elias calls a “purse”) stocked with a soft cell phone and watch and calculator. He plays with it all the way home.

As we drive, Jason finally starts to cry.

We all climb into bed when we get home and wrap our arms around each other and talk in muted voices. Jason and I agree the term “brain damage” and “seizures” are the scary part. Obviously, friends who smoke pot or drink have sustained brain damage. The seizures are the same episodes the first hospital referred to, but the actual word sounds so much more ominous.

We sleep deeply for a few hours, then call Sharman to watch Eli again– at our apartment– while we trek back up. This time, my mother, father and grandmother are there to meet Addie.

Last night, six hours ago, we saw her last. Jason went in first with my mom and grandmother, and Addie was awake, and she looked at him and held his finger. She was out of the incubator and into a crib. That was the good news. The bad news is that she had a tube in her nose feeding her oxygen, because she was forgetting to breath for longer periods when she slept.

The neonatologist on duty wanted to talk to us, so my grandmother left and I came in (only three allowed at a time). He repeated most of the information we heard earlier, only in more detailed and a lot more comforting terms, ruled out several problems, gave us an idea of where we were, what to expect, and answered several questions no one else had or that we hadn’t even thought of. We loved this doctor. He looked like my dad and a gaunt Jeff Daniels, with the palest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. He spoke in a clear, low voice and looked directly at us, stood with his legs slightly apart and his hands crossed behind his back; which made Jason say in the car later: “This is going to sound incredibly dorky, but he’s exactly what I imagine a real Jedi to be like.” It would have been dorky but I knew what he meant.

He said:

There is blood on the brain. There isn’t a term for it: it is just a patch of blood, resting on the brain, irritating it and causing the seizures, which is causing the apnea. It is very rarely documented in full-term infants, but the doctor told us that was also because many times infants aren’t as carefully scrutinized as Addie was. He said it is likely more babies having cranial bleeding and it clears itself up without the medical community knowing. We caught it early, and that’s good.

The latest CAT scan shows the bleeding isn’t spreading, which means there likely is not a blood leak anywhere, and this was a one-time injury during birth or slightly before. He showed us where the blood is, and said it is in a nonfatal area– that it is at least a “safe” place for this to happen. As long as the blood stays there (which it seems to be and they are comfortable assuming it will), there should be no concern about Addie’s actual mortality or any operation. He said there might be some slightly swelling in the brain, but they are not sure, and that if there is, it isn’t as dire as it would be in an adult. He said many things are more optimistic with babies in this area. Babies’ skulls haven’t fused, so some swelling can be accomodated and go down on its own without any problems– unlike an adult, who has a hard skull and might require surgery.

Surgery. One of our big fears, and at the moment, the doctor said it was an extremely remote possibility. He hesitated to even bring it up, because he said it has only happened one or twice in the 15 years he’s been there, with cases that were much more serious and nothing like this, and that while anything can happen, it is so miniscule it really isn’t worth mentioning.

There are still several big looming issues. One is that Addie is still having problems breathing. The doctor said that they will put her on a ventilator if they needed to, and have the machine breathe for her. He said they can remove it later. It didn’t seem to be that big a deal to the doctor, but Jason was extremely worried about this, and I could tell it upset him.

The main problem now is not the blood, really, but what is underneath the blood. In all the test views, the hemorrhage is blocking the underlying tissue.

He said the blood will naturally be cleansed from and absorbed into the brain. We assumed this would take a few weeks, but he said it may be as little as two to three days to see a change. Best case scenario: the blood washes away this week, the brain is no longer irritated, the seizures slow signifigantly or stop, they do an MRI and see that there is no continued bleeding in the cranium and no discernal damage and she will recover fully. Worst case scenario: the bleeding begins to get worse or spreads, or when it washes away they find a problem in the underlying brain tissue. This would also require an MRI. He told us there is very minimal risk involved with these CAT scans, EKGs and x-rays, even though they prefer not to do them too frequently, and that MRIs are the most serious test, because they require an infant to be heavily sedated. The MRIs are the clearest and most telling portrait, but they would only like to do one and it wouldn’t help until the blood is gone and they can– again– see the underlying brain. Next week, probably.

The Jedi doctor seemed to think Addie’s outcome would probably lean towards fair to good right now, but he didn’t want to promise us anything yet. We shook his hand. My dad came in. Jason cupped Addie’s head, and spoke softly to her. Addie had a seizure right before we left and stopped breathing for a few seconds. Jason tried to coach her through it, and she eventually jump-started and gasped some air in, and the nurse ran over and gave her another dose of her medication. I couldn’t stay any more. It was too much, too overwhelming, and the fact that I had given birth 36 hours before was finally catching up to me and I thought I would pass out from exhaustion.

We drove back home. It was 11. Eli was up and waiting for us, and greeted us with hugs when we walked in. Jason told Sharman what had happened. Mid-story, he got a call on his phone. The doctor.

Addie was being put on a ventilator, as a “precaution”.

This news just about killed him. After Sharman left, he debated going back to the hospital at midnight, and sitting by her bed. I told him if he needed to go, I would understand, but if he could, to wait till morning. It was a long drive, he was tired and emotional, I wanted him near me just as much while I recovered, and we would all go back with him first thing. He agreed, and we slept through the night.

I woke up a few hours ago and typed this. Jason is still resting, which is good and what he needs to do.

We have started making vague plans, about who will visit when and where for the next few weeks, and who will take Elias and what we need and how we’re doing. On Monday, we will talk to the insurance company and see what is covered and what isn’t. During the work days, Jason has a jobsite near the hospital and can stop by to say hello to her, or we can meet up there and visit together. Friends have offered to bring us food, but what we will likely need help with in the future is gas and parking; since both with be expensive. Addie can’t have anything in her crib from home, but we can tape pictures to the outside. We decided we would help Elias make a card or letter for his sister each day, bring them to the hospital, tape them up, and take a photo of the baby with it so he could at least see she was enjoying them. We’ll save them and put them in a scrapbook for when she’s home with us, finally, someday.

It’s been hard.

My dad said the best thing, which is: “I don’t know what you’re going through. I can’t imagine. I won’t pretend I can. I’ll just be here and listen.”

The boys are stirring, and I ran out of words.