I heard the steady beeping first. It was slow, far too slow. I tried to force my eyes open, force my leaden arms and legs out of the bed. The first waves of panic started to course through me. Couldn't anyone else hear it? It had started to pick up just a little bit of speed, but the electronic cadence was dangerously slow. The steady pocking of Hope's heartbeat monitor had kept a rhythmic vigil with me for weeks now, and I was well-accustomed to how it was supposed to sound. I had lived my worst moments between those steady beats, and these new sounds were nightmarishly slow. I felt like I was trapped in hardened cement, and finally tried to scream to get the nurse's attention. I tried for all the volume I could muster, and what emerged from my parched throat was barely a whimper.
"Hey, Cupcake," I heard his voice, and my protesting muscles relaxed. Joe was here. He would handle things. I had to make him understand.
"Monitor," I croaked, barely audible, even to myself. What the hell was wrong with me? "Too slow," I forced out, exhausted by the minimal effort.
"It's okay," he soothed, running a light hand over my hair. "It's your heart monitor, not Hope's." I frowned then, and tried to wrap my mind around what was going on. I remembered being cold, and then watching the darkness closing in on Joe's face, and that was about all.
"Do you remember what happened?" Joe asked. I started to nod, then shook my head instead. I was still really tired and my arms and legs felt like they weighed at least two hundred pounds each. I could barely move, and my tongue felt thick in my mouth. I was horribly thirsty, and my brain felt like it was disconnected from the rest of my body. I slowly became aware of a dull ache across my belly, and I started to move my hands to investigate. The smallest touch burned like fire, and I quickly drew in my breath. Tears tried to form in my eyes, but there wasn't enough moisture, and I felt my mouth open in a soundless scream.
"Steph? Listen to me. Stay with me, Cupcake. You're okay. The baby's okay." I turned questioning eyes up to meet his, begging for answers I didn't have the energy to voice. "You started hemorrhaging, Stephanie. You were bleeding pretty bad, and they had to do an emergency cesarean."
"Hope?" There was no sound behind her name, only my mouth forming the word.
"She's down in the NICU," Joe said carefully. "You did great, Cupcake. Two pounds, two ounces. You got her here." His eyes were soft, but there were worry lines across his forehead and fanning out from the corners of his eyes.
"Two pounds?" I wished I could get my brain to work. I wished I could get my voice working too. There were so many questions I wanted to ask.
"More than two pounds," he corrected. "She fits in the palm of my hand, but you got her to more than two pounds, Steph. You did great," he said again. He held a straw to my lips, and I drank gratefully, easing my parched throat.
"You held her?" I finally asked.
He nodded. "Just for a minute." He stopped to clear his throat. "She's perfect," he continued. "She's got a head full of dark hair, and the tiniest fingers I've ever seen." He had been absently toying with my fingers and he stilled. "She opened her eyes once, and I swear she looked at me."
"Yeah?" I couldn't help it. I was finally waking up, and I was starting to get excited.
"Mooch and Shirley brought in their old Polaroid camera," he said. "The pictures aren't the greatest, but I figured you'd want to see right away." I nodded my head vigorously, or at least I tried to, as he fished in his shirt pocket for the precious photographs.
I drew back in shock. Despite all the warnings, I'd been expecting a picture of a baby. Like Valerie's baby. With pudgy cheeks and a round little tummy. Instead, all I could see in those first minutes were a shock of dark hair and what seemed to be a rat's nest of wires and tubes, all hooked into what looked for all the world like a tiny bird, red skinned and helpless, with bones so tiny they seemed almost too fragile for this world.
Joe kept his voice steady. "Most of the wires are just monitors. I know it looks really scary, but when you see her you'll forget about the wires, I swear. Here's a closeup of just her face. See? She's got a little button of a nose, and her mouth is so tiny."
"She has eyebrows," I blurted.
He chuckled low in his throat. "Yeah, she does."
"They look so soft. And look at her ears. Joe, I swear, she has your ears."
He peered over my shoulder. "Do you think so?"
"Absolutely. I've seen those ears a million times, and those are your ears."
"Poor kid," he joked, and I playfully made a face at him.
"I happen to like your ears," I said. "My God, her hands are so small." He had continued to flip through the half dozen grainy Polaroid prints, making sure I'd seen everything I could of our daughter.
"I know," he said. "I put the tip of my pinkie in her palm, and her fingers barely closed around it."
"She held your hand!" My God, she was real. She was finally real, finally here, able to reach out and touch another human being. "Her lungs—is she breathing okay? And they said something might be wrong with her eyes. Are all her organs functioning okay? And what about—"
"Hey, Cupcake, it's okay. I'll tell you everything I know. Just calm down. I don't want you tearing open your stitches or anything."
I subsided back onto the bed, and waited with ill-concealed impatience. Good thing I was laying down, though, because I was still pretty light-headed. And I was so tired. Part of me felt like I could sleep for a week without moving, but the other part of me had to know what was going on with my daughter.
"First off, they had to do an emergency cesarean. I told you that part already, right?" I nodded. "Because of the way the placenta was blocking the cervix, they had to cut much higher than they usually like to. It was touch and go, but the doctors were able to stop the bleeding without doing a hysterectomy, but any future babies will have to come by c-section. You won't be able to deliver vaginally because the uterus could rupture." I nodded. I have to admit my heart skipped just a little when he said, "future babies" so easily. Future babies were good. Not right this minute with my belly burning like fire and Hope still in the hospital. But still. Good to know.
"They got her out really fast, Steph. And she started to cry as soon as her face hit the air. The doctors said that's really good. Her lungs were mature, and she started breathing on her own right away." I hadn't realized I was holding my breath until it rushed out of me. She was breathing. Her heart was still beating and she was breathing.
"She's not on a ventilator?" I asked. That had been one of the things the doctors had tried to prepare me for. If Hope were on a ventilator for an extended period, there were all kinds of complications that could develop. They had to weigh the consequences of her not receiving an adequate oxygen supply with the possible damage the ventilator could do, including rupturing her tiny lungs, brain damage, blindness, and a host of other things that had just washed numbly over me at the time, looming monstrously over Hope's future.
"Not right now. The doctors are cautiously optimistic. She's breathing on her own, and able to regulate her respiration when she sleeps, at least so far. That's why they have her on so many monitors. If her breathing or her heart rate becomes irregular, they have to be able to intervene right away. So far, she's holding her own. They've got her in an enclosed warming tray, with a supplementary oxygen cannula under the hood, but that's it. They've got her on a naso-gastric tube that continually gives her milk. She's so tiny that they don't want her to burn up calories she can't afford learning to suck and swallow yet. They're also worried that she won't be able to coordinate sucking and swallowing with breathing, so they're concentrating on her breathing. They said she can learn to nipple feed later, when she's stronger."
"What about her kidneys? Her other internal organs?" I knew that systemic failure was always an imminent possibility with a preemie.
"Well, she peed in my hand when I held her, and I thought they were going to break out the champagne down in the NICU," Joe said, and I saw him smile, really smile, for the first time.
I wrinkled my nose. "She peed on you?"
He held his shirt away from his chest. "All over my shirt," he said proudly, pointing out the small stain.
"When can I see her?" I asked, now that I had been reassured that she was doing all right.
"The doctor wants to check you out first, but said as soon as you felt up to it, I could take you down in a wheelchair."
The doctor poked and prodded me, and managed to squeeze a few tears out of me when he examined the slice in my belly. Thankfully, the nurse appeared with a shot of morphine as soon as he finished. I didn't enjoy the shot, but the blissful relief from the fire burning in my belly wound was welcome. Joe was careful wheeling me down the hall and onto the elevator, but I felt each crack in the linoleum and every bit of uneven ground sent me into agony. I didn't even want to think about how much it would have hurt if I hadn't had the morphine. I chafed at the delay at the entrance to the NICU when we had to decontaminate ourselves, but I understood the necessity. I wanted to touch my baby with my own hands, but those hands had to be as germ-free as we could make them. Hope and the other babies didn't have the ability to fight off normal germs like full term healthy infants would, so we had to take every precaution.
I saw her hair first, amazingly long and thick for such a tiny baby. Valerie's girls had always stayed half-bald until their first birthday, but Hope's hair was easily an inch long and covered her head like a cap. Whispers of eyebrows rose like tiny gull wings over her closed eyes, and her lashes brushed against the tops of her cheeks. Her minuscule nose was marred by the tube snaking into it, but I decided to ignore it. Her cheeks were round and full, and the tiny mouth pursed didn't look big enough to even emit a squeak. I said as much to Joe.
He chuckled. "Just wait. Believe me, with all those Italian genes, she's got a set of lungs on her, and some damn strong opinions."
"Don't say 'damn', Joe," I corrected automatically.
"Sorry, Cupcake."
"Can we touch her?" Even though she was sitting right in front of me, part of me still didn't believe she was real. I had grown accustomed to her small weight low in my abdomen, almost a comforting warmth that kept me company through the long nights in the hospital room. I'd love feeling her move inside me, and her heartbeat had marked the cadence of my days. But this was new. This whole separate, other living human being had memories and experiences apart from being attached to me, and I wanted to reestablish that connection as soon as I could. If I could touch her, hold her, it was almost like she would become part of me again, and I could keep her safe. I knew even as I thought it that it was completely illogical. Doctors and nurses and electronic equipment all buzzed around the NICU like worker bees at a hive, and all their attention was focused on the few small infants inside these protective walls. But none of them was Hope's mother, and that made all the difference. At least to me.
Joe gestured to one of the nurses, who seemed slightly less buzzed than the others, and she immediately came over to Hope's isolette. "You must be mom," she said and I almost jumped out of the wheelchair. I was mom. Wow. If I weren't so drugged, I'd probably have a panic attack about now, but I was too anxious to finally hold my daughter. I nodded, too overcome to speak. "Just let me check your ID bracelet," she said, and made quick work of making sure the plastic number around my wrist matched the number around Hope's ankle. My God. That little band of plastic was barely the size of a man's wedding ring. With practiced ease, the nurse disconnected several of the wires, then reconfigured some others before gently removing Hope from her plastic enclosure.
"It's better if we can have skin to skin contact, so if you want to undo your gown…" Undo my gown? Here? In front of all these people? My uncertainty must have shown on my face, even as my fingers were slowly rising to the tie behind my neck. "Hang on a second," she said. "The procedures room is empty. Why don't we take everybody in there so your family can have some privacy?" Privacy was good. Family sounded even better, and I felt a small smile work its way to my mouth. I felt Joe's hand squeeze my shoulder and knew I didn't dare even look at him or the waterworks would start. Instead, I reached up and laced my fingers through his, giving an answering pressure.
The nurse had Hope in a firm grip, and sailed to the far end of the room, Joe and I in her wake. I will say this, the nurse was very efficient. She closed curtains, flipped light switches, and peremptorily shoved equipment against the walls, all while cradling Hope securely in her left arm. I have to admit, I was impressed, and silently wondered if I'd ever achieve that level of expertise. I felt Joe's hands at the back of my neck, carefully pulling the ties open, making sure not to catch my hair as he did it. I slid my arms out of the short sleeves of the hated hospital gown, and the nurse gently lowered Hope onto my chest, then covered us both with a warmed white cotton blanket. My arms automatically came up to cradle her slight weight, and I looked down into her precious face. The nurse left us then, and quietly closed the door behind her.
I couldn't tell you if I spent two minutes or two days, then, just looking at her face. I studied every crease, every pore. She was infinitely precious to me. The way her dark hair whorled out from its center crown, the shell-like perfection of her ears, the pink sweetness of her skin. I counted every eyelash, and watched each rise and fall of her small chest. She gave the tiniest wriggle, and settled herself more completely against me, almost melting into me in recognition. She drew in a deep breath, then, and sighed contentedly, nuzzling her cheek against the skin of my breast. My eyes filled, and I chanced a look at Joe, still standing at the door, protective sentinel between us and the rest of the world.
He gave an infinitesimal nod, then, and cleared his throat. I could see a light sheen of tears in his own eyes, though he wouldn't let them fall. "This was how I knew it would be," he said. I arched an eyebrow at him in query, not wanting to disturb Hope's slumber with my voice. "The way you look at her. Watching you holding her," he elaborated. "The three of us here, together. That's what I always thought it would be like." I held out my hand, then, needing his touch, needing to complete the circle. He knelt beside the wheelchair, then, and slid one arm behind my shoulders, and the other around my own arm, cradling me and his daughter in his strong embrace. I felt his breath on my scalp as he buried his face in my hair.
