Second Time

Abstract

Second Time Chris Feudtner Moments matter to the degree we make them. I I walked from the hospital towards home in the early morning, bundled against the lingering cold of the night. I was tired beyond tired. The world surrounding me was dressed in white, a thin coat of snow having fallen in the midst of a squall that had passed through a few hours before. Mine were the only footprints on the path thus far. Not only was the grass tufted with clumps of snow, the southwestern sides of the tree trunks were also plastered white. But none of this snow would last once the sun fully rose. Likewise, the faint day moon, barely imprinted on the far western blue sky, would fade away into nothingness. Or rather, the moon would still be there somewhere, but invisible. Even the snow would transform to be endlessly reborn as new forms, solid or liquid, still or flowing, on distant landscapes or hovering above, evanescent yet eternal. [End Page 535] Then my mind turned back to the baby who had died just a few hours ago, and all that happened in those 22 minutes of life, replaying events almost second by second. Where would all of that life-time go as time moved on? II Glistening wet, hair matted, the crown of the head had emerged. The gloved fingertips of the OB, seated on a stool between the legs of the mother, guided the head, face down, sliding outward as the woman pushed. He then grasped the neck as the head rotated, and first the upper shoulder followed by the lower shoulder with increasing rapidity came out, and with a rush the rest of the torso and legs, along with an uncoiling of umbilical cord and fluid. The OB pivoted and handed the infant to the nurse, turned back, clipped the umbilical cord, and cut the baby free. With the infant partially wrapped in warmed green towels, the nurse came to the resuscitation table and placed the bundle down. The child was a boy, well developed, his eyes open, his skin already pink. Yet as I dried him under the bright lights, and I saw his limbs lying so passively on the warmer bed, the words of the attending neonatologist kept coming back to me: “So sad—their other baby died after such a difficult struggle, and now to have a second with the same condition—so sad.” III Not quite two years before, in the adjacent delivery room, the same mother had delivered another baby, the couple’s third child. That baby girl had been born without any signs of distress after an uneventful pregnancy. Not until the mother brought the baby to her breast to feed for the first time did that child’s hypotonia and weakness become apparent. The infant barely latched on, kept coming off, and was unable to draw any milk. Concerned by the baby’s seeming lethargy, the OB service summoned the NICU team. The baby, who was named Silvia, was taken to the NICU where she underwent a full septic work-up, and received an IV and empiric antibiotic therapy. Four hours after birth, Silvia had her first seizure, although no one knew at the time exactly what had happened. Instead of her body parts moving during the seizure, her body became completely motionless and she stopped breathing. Alarms went off. The seizure lasted perhaps 30 or 40 seconds. The nurse had given her breaths though the oxygen bag-and-mask, and even when she started to breathe again, the NICU team was sufficiently worried that they intubated her and took control of her breathing via the mechanical ventilator. Two hours later, Silvia seized again. So began what her parents later recalled, with grief and regret, as the siege. They were not angry with the NICU staff; quite the opposite, they were extremely grateful for the staff ’s devoted care of their daughter. Over the ensuing [End Page 536] five weeks, as Silvia had several EEG studies that revealed she was having seizures, some noticeable and others not, throughout each day, they would come to the NICU, to the side of her isolette bed, open...