Breathes life into

It hadn't seemed so serious that morning, when the NICU nurse called early to say we should be there.  Of course we'd go, I said, just like we did every morning, in time for his first feeding, just after morning rounds.  But she said we should get there soon.  She said there was a problem.  She didn't want to alarm us, but Charlie had an infection.

The signs of infection in preemies can be subtle, but the overnight staff had noticed that something was wrong with our baby.  In Charlie's case, he'd experienced more desats, dips in his blood oxygen saturation.  His color had been poor.  He hadn't cried and kicked when his diaper was changed.  They took a blood culture and started antibiotics long before they called us.

The doctors believed Charlie's central line — an IV catheter through which medication and nourishment can be delivered — had been compromised.  While we watched, a PA pulled it out, slowly and gently, what seemed like feet of spaghetti-thin tubing.  Charlie didn't move.  At three weeks of age, 32 weeks' gestation, Charlie was septic.

All that day we sat by his isolette, listening to his CPAP rig bubble, watching him slowly receive another blood transfusion, his third.  And what seems crazy to me now is that I really didn't know how sick he was.  It wasn't until a doctor said, "This is really tough...but we think he'll go home with you," that I understood he still might not.

Shot full of vancomycin, to me that night he seemed better.  He was angry now, screaming in protest as his vital signs were taken.  I thought this must be good, in contrast with his earlier stillness, but then he just...stopped breathing.

The nurse rubbed his feet, and he started again.  And then stopped.  Rub, then breathe.  Then stop.  Then rub, then breathe.  Then...stop.

I don't know how long we did that.  I know that we continued even as the doctor told us that it was troubling, this pattern.  That apnea was normal in preterm babies, but when it was tied to an illness it could be a problem, and when episodes occurred in a long string...  He didn't finish that sentence.

Rub, then breathe, then stop.

It's a feeling many new parents share, the conviction that if you don't watch every rise and fall of that inexperienced rib cage, if you don't breathe with your baby, then she won't know how to do it herself.  I breathed for Charlie that night, sitting by his bed, crying, eyeballs so swollen that it hurt to move them in my head, nostrils scrubbed raw by hospital paper towels.  Every gurgle of his CPAP happened, it seemed, because we willed it.  His breaths, when they resumed, were only because we worked for them when he couldn't.

Which isn't true, of course.  The tickle of the feet and the rubbing of the belly helped, but it was the drip of caffeine, the caustic burst of antibiotic, and the transfusion that eventually brought him around.  It was the science: serendipity and inspiration tempered by years of research and refinement, the careful observation and adjustment, a dedication that awes me.  My deep gulps of air did nothing, practically speaking, for Charlie.  All they did was keep me upright, somehow, next to the isolette.

...

I am thinking of the babies who don't have anyone to breathe for them.  The only time I ever heard our NICU nurses say anything negative about another patient — for all the lip service paid to HIPAA, in a small and open ward like ours, there weren't too many secrets — was when a baby came in, born early because of her mother's drug addiction.  The nurses, who were unfailingly warm and supportive to us, positively hissed when they spoke about this baby, so outraged were they by the circumstances of her life.  I'm sure part of what offended them was the mother's drug use, which seemed a preventable cause of the baby's preterm delivery, but they seemed angrier that no one ever visited her.  It's true that in all the time we were there, I never saw anyone there by her bed.  And I think sometimes of this baby and others like her, and I wonder, when they've been sick, who's stood by their beds and willed them alive.

...

I think, How impossibly sad that they should have no one to help them fill those fragile lungs.  But that's not right, because they do have someone.  There are nurses and doctors and PAs and volunteers, all of whom bring their own mixture of expertise and compassion to the ward, who fight passionately for the babies under their care.  And they have the March of Dimes.

People sometimes call children of ART miracle babies.  I suppose there's something to that metaphor, though I don't buy it completely; I believe more staunchly in the science of it.  What seems more miraculous to me than Charlie's conception is his survival.  It's thanks to the work of the March of Dimes that he and countless other babies have lived, have been able to breathe on their own.

Like many preterm babies, when Charlie was born, his lungs were immature.  They lacked surfactant, a substance that keeps the lungs from closing and collapsing upon exhalation, and couldn't stay open on their own.  The development of artificial surfactant therapy, funded by the March of Dimes in the 1980s, ushered in a tenfold decrease in the number of babies who die from RDS (respiratory distress syndrome).  Three doses of surfactant and five years later, Charlie's not only alive but thriving, the only artifact of  his prematurity an occasional touch of asthma. 

And to me, that's still not a miracle; that's science and luck.  The miracle is the generosity that makes it possible.  From the development of the polio vaccine to pioneering work in gene therapy, the March of Dimes has made lifesaving advances in research and practice through its supporters' contributions.  I feel humbled by those who volunteer or give or walk.  I feel staggered by our good fortune when there's still so much to do, so many babies who try but can't survive, so many children lost.  Every time I harangue my older son, that gorgeous wheezy complainer, that former 29-weeker, that obstinate rub-breathe-stopper, into sitting still to use his inhaler, I feel grateful for the gift.

To those of you who've given to the March of Dimes, thank you.  To anyone who'd like to help, please do.  And if you have something to say about how prematurity has touched your life, please tell us.  I'll contribute a quarter to the March of Dimes for every story shared.  (One comment per person, please.)

Quickie

1. Our Halloween party...wasn't.  There were a few casual acceptances by friends who never showed, and so the informal open house I'd envisioned ended up instead as a quick dinner with the family of one (1) of Charlie's friends and his parents.  I learned a lot from the experience — namely, that if only one family responds, you're probably better off calling, explaining, and offering to let them off the hook — and experienced only a mild amount of inconvenience and embarrassment in doing so.  (I would have been somewhat less embarrassed had I put the tower of festive paper goods and the three bottles of wine away before their arrival; I would have been somewhat more so had I revealed that in addition to the pizzas, there was a gigantic lasagna in the oven to boot.)
   
   The kids had fun, and that's what matters, right?  That and the fact that I now have left over two surprisingly decent bottles of red that I don't even have to share.
   
   Thanks, everyone, for your sympathetic indignation, your support, and your suggestions.  The one that I found most helpful was the observation Ellen made, that I need to "mommy network."  Leaving aside the fact that the idea of "mommy anything"ing fills me with trepidation, she's right: "This is all about you socializing. Sorry, that's the game."  More on this in another entry.  Thanks again for your insights.
2. Paul has the flu.  Due to the same shortages everyone else in the blog world has chronicled exhaustively, Ben and Charlie won't get their flu shots until Friday.  Just to be safe, I am keeping Paul quarantined in a refrigerator box.  I pass him soup through the air holes I poked in it.  (Note to self: Next time poke holes before inserting husband.  The flu won't kill him but the ice pick may have.)
3. Can anyone recommend a babysitter in Alexandria/Pineville, Louisiana?  I'm visiting soon and need someone reputable to leave my children with so my mother and I can go gamble.  ...WHAT.  Oh, like you don't leave your kids with strangers so you can play the nickel slots.
4. Do y'all know I read trashy romances?  Have I just made you uncomfortable with that admission?  I know I've written at great length here about my own alabaster bosom; my slick, tight sheath; and my swollen bud shyly nestled among the rosy petals of my...
   
   Wait, I haven't done the bud yet?  Why, my Photoshop throbs at the very idea.
   
   Anyway, I read trashy romances, and I do so avidly.  I read many other things, too, but I enjoy penis-awfuls — I think I just coined that term — unabashedly.  I'm often appalled, though, by the way they always end: either the heroine is pregnant or, in an epilogue, she's dandling young Dukeling Goldenheir on her muslin-covered knee while her besotted husband is playing the Wii with their comely twin daughters.  I exaggerate only a bit; there's an annoying trend in novels I've read lately for the hero and heroine to be involved with their children to the point of anachronism.  ("The baroness insisted on suckling her own children, even though it outraged her martinet mother-in-law, who was often heard to mutter darkly that if Old Drinky Nell had been a good enough wet nurse for her brace of seven sons, why, then, she was sure she just didn't know what...!  Lady Comelybosom met these sotto voce asides with a wordless smile.  On this night, perched on the edge of a gilt chair in her home's commodious ballroom, she nodded to an acquantaince among the crush, then edged her fichu downward, the better to receive the questing cherubic mouth of her latest babe.  As she felt her milk let down, she gave the signal to the musicians, who opened the ball with a sprightly reel.")
   
   But that is tangential.  What I wanted to say was that I was delighted to see a blog I read, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, take on the question of the traditional romance-novel HEA — happily ever after — as it pertains to infertiles.  If you share my weakness fondness for romances and you're looking for recommendations for books that don't hinge on Lord Darkshaft and Lady Dampening eventually procreating, check out the comments on this post.  And if you know of any such stories, please do weigh in and HABO, as the bloggers say: Help a Bitch Out.

Three things that make me feel queasy

1. From antiangie on Twitter: "I'm not sure what you should do with this, just telling you it exists."
   
2. Jerry O'Connell is writing a memoir about parenthood.  Its title: Cry, Feed, (Make Love to Wife), Burp. I for one can't wait to hear still more about how much he likes having sex with Rebecca Romijn.
3. Number of Charlie's friends attending our party: One (1).

I bet they'd come if I made the frightening hand

I'd been toying with the idea for a couple of weeks, to invite people over for a casual gathering before Saturday night trick-or-treating.  I'd order pizza for the kids, put together a few amusing edibles for the adults — certainly this, certainly not this — and we'd all go out wilding, as the young people call it, as a group.

I meant to put a sign up at the preschool on Monday inviting everyone in Charlie's class, but I was sick and spent all day lying in bed either sleeping or mentally composing my will.  (If anybody wants 10,000 units of hCG that expired two years ago, which I have inexplicably kept for four years past the time when my ovaries might have met it with anything more than a bark of derisive laughter, holler.  We'll work us up a codicil.)

So on Tuesday we made a special trip, Charlie and I, to hang the sign.  Nice sign, too, with a spider-infested font and some clip-art and those neatly perforated "take one" tabs and everything.  I take my mothering seriously, y'all.

We got down to his classroom and prepared to hang our sign on the bulletin board next to the parent mailboxes.  And what did I see in more than half of the mailboxes?  Invitations.  Halloween-themed, obviously, unless people are using stationery with darling black bats and wee little tombstones for other purposes these days.  It's possible, I guess, that they were notes of condolence, but since no one sent e-mail drumming up casseroles, I'm pretty sure nobody died.

There were two separate invitations, in fact, to two separate functions.  Or possibly two separate coupons for two separate local semi-ghoulish service providers, although I have not heard that bat infestations are a big problem in these parts at this time of year, nor do I think the local gravestone-engraving concern offers any price breaks — at least not via flyers clearly marked "Bonfire and fireworks!"  Although come to think of it that's not a bad way to festive up a burying.  But I digress.

Two separate parties already on the books.  To which neither was of one Charlie invited to.  (I'm so upset that I've totally lost control of my grammar.  Can stress incontinence be far behind?  Not to worry. I do have a coupon for that.)

But I gritted my teeth and hung my sign anyway, feeling like an ass and a half for not posting it earlier.  I'm worried that no one will come, which would be a huge disappointment for Charlie, who's been wittering excitedly ever since we posted our invitation.  "I just know my best friends will come!"  "Mama, did you write on the sign that people should bring their costumes?  ...Maybe we should go back and add that part."  "I hope my friends like pizza!"  And this morning, "I hope some parents have pulled off the little tabs from our sign!"

Gaaaaaaaah.  So do I, kid.  Otherwise I'm going to have to pull in a couple of ringers, and it'd be awfully tough to justify flying Soledad O'Brien in for a slice and a sack full of candy.

The deeper level of anxiety, of course, is for the fact that Charlie wasn't invited to either of the other parties.  It's hard not to take it personally, even though I know, having constructed guest lists myself, that it's not necessarily a reflection of how well Charlie's liked by his friends.  It may have nothing to do with that.  It could be how well he's liked by his friends' parents — oh, God.  Or how well Paul and I are liked by his friends' parents — oh, sweet Jesus gay.  And I so want others — not everyone, but almost — to see our kids as I do.  As people with a sweet brilliance all their own, funny boys, kids who can share their gift for happiness, generous-hearted friends.  Company well worth the cost of a bat-spattered envelope and a slice of pepperoni.  And discovering that insecurity in myself, the need to have my children liked, a need I almost never feel on my own behalf, is humbling and scary as hell.

Look, all of a sudden I'm kind of regretting including "CLOTHES-OFF CORPSE-ON-CORPSE XXX ORGY OF THE UNDEAD" and "MENU TO INCLUDE UNSHRIVEN KITTENS" on the invitation, is all I'm trying to say.

Your invitation is in the mail

This morning's breakfast conversation:

Charlie: When Ben and I are grown men, we'll still be brothers.  But we won't live in the same house.

Julie, thinking, I hope not, because that'll mean both of you are in prison: You could live in the same house if you wanted.

C.: No!  I need a lady!  To be my spouse!  It has to be a lady.  Men are spouses with ladies.

J.: Well, actually, some men are spouses with other men.  So you don't have to have a lady if you don't want to.  In fact, you don't have to —

C., brightening appreciably: Oh!  Well, then, I will have a man for a spouse.

J.: — have a spouse at all.  Oh.  Huh.  Got anyone in mind?

C.: Yes!  M.!  He will be my spouse!

J., faintly, considering M.'s flair for mayhem, imagining a ruined Christmas 20 years down the road when a drunk and angry M. finally tells poor Charlie that Santa is a filthy fucking lie: Hmmm.

C.: And, Mama, you can come to the wedding!

J.: Thanks.  I'd love to.

C.: You will love it!  M. and I will wear matching outfits!

In twin Elmo underpants or not, in malicious Santa-ruining and out, I believe every preschooler should have the right to marry the incorrigible rapscallion he loves.  Don't you think so?

Truing up

I just want you to know that at no time has any agent affiliated with the TSA relieved me of either of my children during an airport security screening.  This is kind of odd when you consider that until recently I traveled carrying Nestle infant formula liquid poison, Ben's diapers are filled not with highly absorbent gel but the somewhat explodier Semtex, and Charlie goes nowhere without his nipple ring.

If this is making no sense to you, hello!  Welcome to my blog, where little that I say ever does.  I'm referring to a story posted by a blogger claiming that TSA agents had separated her toddler son from her during a security screening, contrary to the TSA's stated policy.  The TSA rebutted the story on its blog, posting video footage that appears to contradict several of the blogger's contentions, including the most upsetting, that her child had been taken out of her sight while she remained in the screening area.

Which makes me realize I should say a few things about truth.  I solemnly assure you that here at executive headquarters of A Little Pregnant Global Amalgamated Light Industrial Concern, we operate under the highest standards of veracity and accountability.  I will allow, however, that there may have been...certain assertions...I've made here in the past that might have been...left open to interpretation.  Or misconstrued.  Or misquoted.  Misquoted!  That's it.  Yes, I wouldn't be at all surprised if now and again I've misquoted myself.  We legitimate journalists bloggers do that.

So in the interest of correcting any perceived inaccuracies, I give you now the unvarnished truth, with my apologies for having misled you.

1. My husband's name isn't Paul.  It's actually Viggo.  That's short for Vercingetorix and, Jesus, you should see him unify the Gauls.
2. My boy/girl twins are not the result of IVF.
3. I live not in a small New England town but in a climate-controlled glass sarcophagus that is kept in constant flight aboard a military aircraft maintained at a cruising altitude of 39,000 feet.  The flight crew sleep in shifts, and when the plane is low on gas they do one of those aerial refueling maneuvers, thanks to a craft with a probe that looks not entirely unlike an airplane wang.
4. All proceeds from my sidebar advertising actually get split evenly between the NRA and my get-a-portrait-of-Ted-Nugent-tattooed-on-my-breast fund.
5. My infertility is not, in fact, unexplained.  It turns out — funny story, remind me to tell you sometime —  I'm actually a mule.
6. It wasn't a breast pump.  It was a penis pump.  Oh, don't pretend you're surprised.
7. You know, I like the cut of that William Saletan's jib.  (As an aside, I regret mispronouncing his name as I Fucking Hate William Saletan.  My apologies, my good sir.  It turns out the I Fucking Hate is silent.)
8. I didn't drink all the vodka I claimed to in any of my sadder posts.  Actually it's been Windex.
9. I only told you I had two C-sections because I didn't want you to suspect I carry within me a seductive, dark, invisible, undulating, moist pathway to conception and birth.
10. IVF attempts 1 through 3 were mistakenly attributed to Oscar Wilde.  IVF attempts 4 through 6 are actually a 47-year-old unemployed dataprocessor living in squalor in a mobile home in eastern Washington state.  IVF attempt 7 might have given your computer a virus, so I hope you run frequent backups.  IVF attempt 8 wants you to know that it was provided as a review copy in exchange for promotional consideration on this blog.

Anyone else have any corrections to make?  Now's the time to set the record straight.

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Hey!  Look!  I'm a finalist for a blog award.  If you feel moved, vote.  If you feel moved to vote for me, vote a lot!  I wouldn't normally ask, but the ultimate prize is real money, which might just pay for the Nuge.