The Story Continues

We sat in the post partum room and waited for the Neonatologist to come in.  The NICU nurses had told us that it would be about an hour, but I think it ended up being closer to two. Slowly our families started to trickle into our room.  When the doctor finally came in he was greeted by a huge group of people who were concerned about our little guy.  This doctor didn't exactly have the best bedside manner.
He was one of THOSE guys.

You know the ones.

The guy who's been divorced a few times.
The one who's got a HUGE ego.
The one who is NEVER wrong.
The one who is a SUPERIOR being.
I could go on, but you get the picture.

I remember that the room seemed really dark, and I wanted somebody to turn on a light but didn't want to interrupt him.  He was drinking a Diet Pepsi out of a bottle the entire conversation. He'd pause in between sentences to take a swig, and I really wanted to knock it out of his hand and yell at him to tell me what's going on with my baby.

He started by saying that he believed that Carter had come too early.  He thought that he looked to be 36 weeks not almost 39 weeks.  I told him that I knew that my dates were not wrong, but he didn't really care what I had to say.  I don't think that he took into consideration how small Carter's umbilical cord was either. Those things were taken into consideration later. He told us that so far they had found that Carter had an incomplete cleft lip, and a cleft soft and hard palate. He had also noticed that Carter seemed to have some paralysis above his right eye. They had done an echo on his heart and it looked fine.  He then said "you know, I should probably check his Kidneys too... we'll do that in the morning...it's really not a priority".  This is where Michael kind of lost his cool (yay for Daddy), and asked if we should have Carter transferred to the local children's hospital.  This was the point where the doctor lost some of his attitude and told us that we could if we wanted, but he thought it was best to keep Carter as close to home as possible since he was stable. He had paged an ENT and was sending Carter's Chromosomes off to the lab for testing. As he was leaving, he told me that he thought that the medication I was on for my Molar Pregnancy could have caused all of this.
Wonderful.
I let it sink in.
This was all my fault.
But wait! I hadn't taken any medication for my Molar pregnancy. What was he talking about?! He said "you were never on nameofmedicationthatIcan'tpronounce", and I said "No." He replied "Huh. Well, you can come and see him as soon as the epidural wears off."  Thanks, Jacka**

That moment couldn't have come fast enough.  The minute I could get out of the bed, we were out of there and in the NICU. They let us hold him even though he was on a vent. I kind of hate this picture of me holding him because I have a scared look on my face, and at that moment I actually felt relief that I could hold my baby boy.

Notice Carter's arms.  He held them this way for the first two months.  In fact, he had to wear splints to help hold his wrists straight.  They broke some of the NICU rules that night and let Michael's sister and our mom's back all at once to visit the little guy. He looked so tiny in his isolette.

Needless to say, that night I didn't sleep at all.  I kept praying to God and asking him if he was sure that I could handle this. I was really nervous for the next day because Carter was having a kidney ultrasound and a hearing test. Michael had gone home to be with our other kids. I have no idea how that conversation went down with the older two, but when I talked to Jovie on the phone she told me that Carter had a sick ear and a sick lip, but that he was SO cute. They were both so accepting of Carter from the very beginning...even though they didn't get to even see him until he was 10 weeks old.