90 days in the NICU part 3
By Bill Vance

After going to the hospital for the first or second child, you think that you have it all figured out. You have a due date, a bag packed, and childcare lined up for the soon to be older brothers. By now you have already had a baby shower and pre-registered for the upcoming hospital stay. By the third child you are an old hand at this, and on the fourth trip they welcome you like old relatives and ask how the younger ones are. On the 5th trip in, it was all about timing and we got there and within hours he was born.
When a woman has been pregnant for eight or nine months, she is ready for that little guy to come out. She has set a birthing plan, had the baby shower, but when the baby comes early you lose all senses of reasoning and panic sets in as you wonder whether or not this baby will be strong enough to be born, let alone make it to maturity.
My wife came out to the front room late at night on Monday the 9th of February. “I think my water just broke.”
I sat up, shocked “no way, your joking,” I said to her.
Tracy had a look of dread on her face, tears in her eyes, and shakes her head side to side. “I wish I was.”
My mind was foggy, it was all so surreal. This kind of stuff happens on TV, not to me. Its too early, will the baby die, will it have defects? All these thoughts and many more were going through my mind. We got loaded up into the car and started the 30 mile drive down to Seattle from Everett.
It had been a rough winter so the temperature was 28 degrees and the roads were a sheet of ice. My wife is yelling at me to go faster, but I was worried about the roads. We get her there and the same nurses that she saw 2 days before said, “oh, your back.”
We started off in the triage area, but due to the length of time between contractions they got her into a bed and started monitoring the contractions, heart rate of the baby, and her own vitals. The doctor felt around and ascertained that the baby was in the head down position and that these contractions were making her cervix more effaced and ready for labor. He called the on call doctor and let her know that this baby was coming tonight and that she better head in.
My wife was still very upset, asked about steroids for the baby, but the doctor said there was not enough time. We were sitting there while the doctor was talking and all of a sudden there was a gush of fluids that soaked the bed. My wife and I looked at each other and we were both confused, does water break twice? That when the doctor got a look on her face of complete dread. She explained to us as quickly as possible that what happened was the head of the baby acted as a cork, it stopped all fluid from coming out. The problem is that he spun around in the womb, now opening the floodgates so to speak. The main problem with this scenario was that now there was no fluids to swim in and the cord wrapping around the neck was the number one concern. The doctor told me that they were moving her right now to do an emergency c-section and if I wanted to be there I had 5 minutes to get gowned up.