side note before i go to bed...The American President always makes me want to cry...and have someone who cares about me deeply and can't live without me. especially the scene where she walks out of his closet wearing only one of his button-downs (ok, a little risque) and says she's not scared, and then the one at the end where she comes back and runs into his arms. sigh...*melt*...

Cara*

*not her real name

It was the end of my NICU orientation and I was in Labor and Delivery for the day, orienting with the transition nurse. I remember it was around nine in the morning, and things were starting to wake up (specifically, me). We were filling out the delivery log for the c-section we'd just finished when I heard the words "prolapsed cord." Right then, it was the calm moment before the hurricane hits harbor-the Category 5 hurricane. Nurses converged on that room like bees to a hive. The doctor had checked the patient, suspected a prolapse, and had the charge nurse verify. It was so.

We ran to the OR, flipped on the warmer, and ripped open the emergency box, endotracheal tubes and laryngoscope ready for one of my fellow NICU nurses who had just arrived. We were just laying out the nursery paperwork when they wheeled Cara* into the OR. A nurse gripped the bedrails on each side of the bed, and the charge nurse was IN the bed, her gloved hand holding the baby's head off the umbilical cord and thus keeping him alive.

Cara was moved onto the OR table and the nurses strapped her arms down and then began hurriedly prepping her swollen belly and inserting a Foley catheter. At the other end of the bed, the anesthesiologist pressed an oxygen mask to her face and began pulling medications out of glass vials. I looked through the window at the back of the OR and saw the two doctors scrubbing in. As they walked into the OR, taking the sterile towels from the scrub tech to dry their hands, I reached for mom's hand.

"Cara." She looked at me, fear bright in her tear-filled eyes. "Hi, Cara. My name is Amy, and I'm a nurse. I'm going to be taking care of your son when he comes out, okay? I want you to relax and breathe." The sterile drape was tossed over the top of my head, and I ducked as the anesthesiologist pinned it up. He began pushing anesthetics into her IV. I looked up and the surgeons were finishing the sterile gowning.

My eyes darted back to Cara. "Keep breathing that oxygen, okay? You're going to go to sleep for a while, and here in a minute, you're going to have a baby. Just relax." Her eyes were heavy. The anesthesiologist gave one last push of medication, and her eyes closed. He quickly pulled off the mask, inserted a laryngoscope blade in her mouth, and slid the endotracheal tube in with one smooth motion, just as the doctor made her first cut. My warmer alarm was going off, so I turned around to silence it. When I looked back, I could see a tear sliding down Cara's cheek.

Forty-five seconds later, a beautiful baby boy was pulled kicking and screaming from his mother's womb, and he didn't stop. We quickly dried him off, watched him turn pink, and weighed and measured him. I put a warm hat on his head, an identification band on one arm and the opposite ankle, and then reached over and secured a larger bracelet with identical numbers on his mother's wrist. Then, I wrapped that precious child, whose APGAR scores were better than any infant we delivered that day, and took him to his mother.

She was not conscious, but her face was the first one that baby touched, the first cheek his lips kissed.

I readjusted his hat and blankets. It was time to meet daddy now-the man who we had left, fearful, at the Labor and Delivery nurses station as we raced into the OR with his wife. The transition nurse pushed the crib and had the nursery paperwork, and I carried the precious bundle down the short hallway from the OR back to Labor and Delivery. The door swung open, and there stood a man in a cowboy hat, denim shorts, and a button-down shirt, looking more scared than any man I had seen before or have seen since.

I smiled and said, "Daddy, someone has been anxiously waiting to meet you." I handed him his child as the tears rained down his cheeks. He laughed, held his son up, and said, "He's beautiful. Perfect. Is he ok?" We reassured him that his son and wife were just fine, and he laughed again, still crying, as he cradled his firstborn son...

welcome back, me...

well, here i am. i have been a busy little bee the last several months. as much as i've wanted to, i haven't had time to get on here and post.

i've realized a few things over the last several months. as a budding author hoping to one day be published, i am finally understanding just how much truth there is in the statement that you should write what you know. talking about NICU is an every day thing for me: i forget that most of the population never enters the mysterious world that is such an intimate part of my life, and they are fascinated by the stories i tell. so that's what this is now. this is my new decompression device to process what happens at work. i'm going to use this to practice my writing. feel free to comment, critique, or add your stories. i pray these stories are an inspiration to someone.

i suppose i feel somewhat like the character John Boy in the old series The Waltons. he loved to write, but the only thing he knew where the stories of his family and of growing up during the Great Depression. so he wrote...and wrote...and wrote. and he graduated from college and became published.

so let me welcome you (with the utmost respect and commitment to my patients' privacy and to HIPAA regulations that guide my practice) to my world.