I Remember Summer - part V

The ambulance arrives around midnight staffed with a team of five; a doctor, two paramedics and two nurses. I am told they are here and after their first priority of tending to my baby they will be in to see me. My husband is with them. Easily and quickly they make their assessment, start an IV and prepare for transport. The doctor then turned all his attention to me and my husband. Talking and making sure that any questions we had were answered, saying that it would take at least seventy-two hours for them to know exactly how he was. The paramedics and nurses then came in with the incubator and our precious baby. We said so long, told him we loved him and off to the Big Apple he went at just over four hours old. The ambulance was like a mini operating room, it was equipped to handle almost anything.


My husband returned from Cornell Medical Center late afternoon the next day having spent the day with our little guy. He is oh so small, but his larger (?) size is a blessing. They so expected smaller for his time of gestation. He is 10 weeks early, there hadn't been any miscalculation. They confirmed that; he has no fingernails; no cartilage in his ears; these things had not yet formed, they will soon though. At eight hours old he had some respiratory distress. He is so tiny that when he becomes very relaxed and sleeping he starts to shut down. Alarms alert the medical personnel and they rouse him. He will continue growing, but now in an incubator. His feeding is 1/33 of an ounce. He is in the Neonatal Itensive Care. Here each baby has their own nurse and doctor 24 hours a day. At this time they would not allow any pictures to be taken until seventy-two hours old. Guess this was the magic number, seventy-two, by then they would know all the possibilities and probabilities. God will take care of it.

I will spend the next three days in the hospital, when I am released I am told that I cannot travel for a time yet. I go home holding a picture.