My family loves talking about my trip to Johns Hopkins hospital in a helicopter because we love to rag on my dad for running out of film before I got to the helicopter. Evidently he took a few too many pictures of my mom crying as she said goodbye to me. For some reason I don't remember hearing the story leading up to the helicopter until this week.
I was born at 1:03 a.m. and my mom said they whisked me away because I was having trouble breathing. Here's the first shocker of the story... my dad left and went home. He claims they told him I just needed some oxygen and I'd be alright, but I'm having a hard time imagining I would ever allow my husband to leave me under normal circumstances let alone if my baby isn't breathing normally.
Meanwhile my mom was moved into a room by herself which she interpreted as her baby was going to die. She assumed they didn't want her around other new moms when it happened. Evidently a baby died at the hospital the week before and my mom had read about it and then overheard nurses talking about it after I was born. A series of coincidences combined with my lack of normal breathing had her freaking out to say the least. By 7 a.m. when the nurses changed shifts, the new nurse realized my mom hadn't had a chance to hold me and went to get me, but my mom said my chest was rising and falling so heavily that they had to take me back for oxygen pretty quickly. After my doctor arrived they decided I needed to go to Johns Hopkins... in a helicopter... without my mom. Cue photos of my hysterical mom. (I am feeling kind and decided to leave them off the world wide web.)
I've obviously never had a baby, so I can't even pretend to imagine what my mom was going through. To give birth for the first time and not know if your baby is going to live is terrifying to say the least. Usually my family hears the helicopter story and we laugh it off, because despite a slight heart murmur I am healthy and never displayed any signs of what must have been some crazy first hours of life.
Most of the time the helicopter story is just another silly thing my dad did (or didn't do), but the other night I heard the fear in my mom's voice and saw the anxiety in my dad's eyes. Looking back, most moms would kill for a private room or a chance to give her kid a helicopter ride, but to my mom they were my death sentence.
There's no point in getting stuck in the past reliving those moments and I'm so thankful my mom didn't let those first scary moments rule her life as a mother and keep me in a glass cage. And while I don't want to be super dramatic, I also don't want to take those moments for granted. I don't know that I was really "near death" but I think my mom would say I was close enough... Our life is such a series of events that could have gone another way but they didn't. Let's be grateful for today.
