Amity's Story Begins, Part IV

That first day in the NICU was the hardest. We weren't able to hold our girl, she was hooked up to a lot of lines, and we were pretty unable to do anything for her except just sit there and talk to her. She was hooked up to a status monitor which we would develop a love-hate relationship with. It provided a certain amount of comfort because we could observe all of her vital signs at a moment's notice, and see without a doubt that everything was checking out just fine. We also knew that if anything started to go wrong multiple nurses would be there within seconds to check on her. However, whenever one of the values would go out of the acceptable range, an alarm would go off. It wasn't bad as far as alarms go - fairly soothing and benign, really. It was just the knowledge of what it meant that became stressful. Not all of the sensors were 100% reliable 100% of the time, so occasionally the alarm would go off for no good reason, and every time that happened there was a moment's fear that things were about to head downhill. That didn't stop me from dreaming up ways that I could build a portable one to attach to her so we could see her status at home whenever we wanted. Which would be way better than any monitor you could get at Babies R Us.

In the first hour of that day we decided on her name. Before we went to bed nothing sounded good, but somehow that hour of sleep gave us enough focus to really look at things and see what worked. Since we had started talking about names for girls months ago, I had really liked the puritan practice of naming a child based on some value or saying - I had joked that "If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned" was a top candidate. In reality, I liked the idea of Faith, Hope, and Charity, but wanted something a little different. Amity, which means roughly "friendship" or "agreement" is what we ended up going with. Writing exactly what the name means deserves an entry unto itself, so I won't go into it much more here. We really liked Mira too, which became her middle name.

During that time, we were able to get filled in more completely about what the problem had been and what they were doing to try to help. Amity had a section of her umbilical cord that had become weakened somehow or other. The cord had been wrapped around her neck during delivery - not tight enough to cause any issues, but enough that it was under quite a bit of tension when she came out. The combination meant that the cord shredded. The umbilical cord is composed of multiple large arteries. If it is cut without being clamped, it is like having one of your major arteries cut. Amity lost between 10% and 20% of her blood in the few seconds between the cord shredding and getting it reclamped safely right near her belly button.

Thankfully, she was a fairly big girl, and she had been in superb condition throughout the delivery - heart rate great, lined up well, etc. The vital signs mentioned above showed that her heart rate and breathing rate were perfect and her oxygen levels were doing just fine, but the one concern was her blood pressure, which was averaging in the mid 20's, while they wanted to see it somewhere around 40-50. Not good. To try to help, they were giving her saline (to get the blood volume back up) and dopamine (which apparently helps to regulate that stuff). The ultimate solution would be a blood transfusion to help both volume and red cell count. For babies they give only O negative blood, and it had to be gotten from Denver. She ended up needing two good sized transfusions, but as soon as she had them her color started improving dramatically.

We had family come in one at a time to see her that day, because they were still pretty touchy about infection and disruption, etc. Amity spent that first 12 hours or so groaning/cooing - it was the sound you might make if you were really sick and needed some sympathy. We felt so bad for her but also thought it was so cute. The nurses said it was part of trying to expel acid - I'm thinking maybe too much CO2 in the lungs or bloodstream or something?

Kim was able to take a shower that day and recuperate a bit more, which was a huge help to her - having time to get cleaned up does more for her than sleep can, sometimes. I ran home to take care of the animals, which gave me some time to breath and reflect, and it was really helpful. We basically spent the day hanging out in the NICU with Amity, talking with family and a few friends, and catching quick naps where we could. It was really tough for Kim especially to be unable to hold her, but the nurses told us that if things were looking good we would be able to try that evening.