My son was born face up. And if you were an OB doctor, you would probably guess that my wife had a cesarean section, because most babies who are face up can’t make it through the vaginal canal. And you would be wrong. She did it the old-fashioned way. As soon as my son shot out of my wife’s vagina, everyone saw that he was face up, and the nurse turned to the doctor and exclaimed “see I told you he was face up!” Which explained the difficulty my wife was having getting him out. And why you might ask, did my son come shooting out so fast after taking so long to get to that point? That’s because he made himself a nice second degree tear in my wife’s perineum. And folks, let me tell you… that’s one hell of a strong girl who can push a baby out through her skin. I even overheard nurses in the hallway commenting how impressive it was that the baby was face up and yet my wife managed to push him out through her canal.
Unfortunately, coming out face up was not without its consequences. My baby boy had some fluid in his lungs and he wasn’t taking deep breaths like he should have been. So instead of immediately getting to do the kangaroo care my wife and I planned to do, my son spent the first five minutes of his life on a counter with tubes shoved down his throat. Oddly, they let my wife hold her baby for what seemed to be a photo op. She held him, they took a photo, but to that then whisked him away to the NICU. And I followed.
And for the first three days of his life, my son lived in the NICU. Hooked up to machines. And I stayed in the nursery with my son, in a rocking chair. I watched other babies come and go, who were free to return to their mothers after their requisite time in the nursery. But my son’s respiratory rate was higher than it should have been, so they admitted him to the NICU which means he couldn’t leave that room. And because my wife had an epidural, she was not allowed to leave her room for the first few hours.
And this was hard for us, because the most important thing to us going into this delivery was the ability to immediately do skin to skin contact after our baby was born. And we couldn’t do that. And the second highest priority on our list was that we did not want to use any formula to feed our baby. But having him in the nursery meant that my wife wasn’t free to feed him whenever she wanted, or more importantly, whenever he wanted. You see, I learned a lot about how hospitals work. The feeding schedules they use in the nursery, are not about what the baby needs. Rather it’s about a set schedule based around the nurses shift changes. And because of this, the nurses tried, and ultimately succeeded without our knowing it, on several occasions to give formula to our baby. My wife and I had to fight very hard in order to get the nurses to call my wife up whenever it was time to come feed the baby.
Because of my son’s high respiratory rate, the pediatrician on-call decided to do an x-ray. Now I worked at hospitals, and have worked in radiology departments. So I know how things work. The pediatrician orders an x-ray; radiology department comes up and takes the x-ray; and the radiologist downstairs reads the x-ray. Well, reading an x-ray of a newborn, who is only hours old, is vastly different than reading a normal x-ray. And here’s where we became victim of hospital politics: the radiologist who had the x-ray gave a very waffling report. And to be honest, that’s what radiologists who are not very good often do. They give these reports that are sort of all over the place, in order to save their butts, without being very exact about anything. The problem is, the pediatrician on-call has to assume that radiologist knows what he is talking about. In our case, the radiologist said it could be something bad, so the pediatrician had to assume the worse and admit our son for another day at the hospital.
This meant that after my wife’s two days of insurance ran out, she was sent home without her baby. And that’s probably the most angry I have ever been in defense of my life. I went downstairs that night and got a copy of my son’s films. I woke up at 6 AM the next morning and drove an hour south and dropped the films off at the office of a radiologist I used to work with. She called me up that morning, and confirmed what I believed… that the report issued by the radiologist the prior day at was bogus. And the films looked just fine.
But this was all for just peace of mind. Because unfortunately, my radiologist friend had no sway at the hospital where we were delivering. The next morning we returned to the hospital and when the pediatrician on-call came I explained everything to her. She had another radiologist at the hospital read the films again, and thankfully that radiologist knew what he was doing and gave our son a clean bill of health. In hindsight, it was frustrating that we could not bring our son home with us due to a nonspecific report issued by the poor radiologist. However, because my wife and I both worked at hospitals, we understood the politics and even though we thought it was unfair we knew that we had no choice. We certainly didn’t blame the pediatrician, whose hands were tied by the waffling report that was issued by the radiologist. One thing that did cheese me off pretty good though is that the radiologist who issued the lousy report refused to talk to my wife or me. What a Dick. To quote the father from the movie Juno, “if I see that radiologist, I’m going to punch him in the wiener.”
