Crying Over Spilled Milk

I’ve been working on putting together a series of posts called Tales from the NICU that I’m hoping to put out soon.  In the meantime, the kiddos have finally come home and Mom and I have gone from parenting ‘lite’ to the real deal. Here’s a snapshot of some of the fun I’ve had this week.  This is effectively the modern equivalent of wearing a sandwich board in the middle of the town square.  Enjoy!

I looked in disbelief as 600ml of the breastmilk I was packaging into bottles spread out on the counter and dripped down to the floor.  It was like someone had sucked the air out of the room.  My wife had seen the whole thing happen. Almost an entire day’s worth of pumping was ruined and making a bit of a mess along the way.  I grabbed a towel… The most normal thing I could think to do when dealing with a spill. 

I could see how much work went into pumping 8 times a day to make enough milk to feed our daughters.  I have an immense respect for that work and know how carefully the end product needs to be handled.  I’d joked that I felt like I was handling plutonium every time I picked up an open container of milk.  I always thought about one of the infamous accidents during the development of the atomic bomb, the demon core incident.  Basically, an experiment had been set up where the only thing stopping a plutonium bomb core from going supercritical and releasing radiation was the blade of a flathead screwdriver held by one of the physicists. Long story short, during one test, the screwdriver slipped, and radiation was released.  The guy holding the screwdriver died 9 days later, but he knew immediately that he was already as good as dead. Much like actual plutonium, I knew that even a little mistake while I was holding a Nalgene full of breast milk could have a bad outcome.  Now there had finally been an accident, and I was pretty sure I was as good as dead as well.

“Whaaat juuust happened?!” She said to me? Inside I’m thinking, “Shit, shit, shit…SHIT.” It might have been more vulgar, but to be honest it’s a bit of a blur.  “I spilled the milk!” I said. “In the mixing container!” As if that wasn’t obvious enough.  In reality my wife looked way more calm then I was expecting given the situation.  This made me even more nervous.  I was afraid she looked calm because she was slowly scanning the kitchen trying to decide on what kitchen implement to use as a weapon.  Paring knife? Frying pan? One of the 3 rolling pins she got for Christmas last year...

I think I briefly considered if Seppuku was the appropriate measure to maintain my honor after what just happened. But that would make even more of a mess, and Japanese ritual disembowelment just didn’t seem right when the only knife within reach was made in Germany.  I turned around to face my wife.  “I’m so sorry!”.

The syringe I was using to suck milk out to fill up the next day’s bottles had broken.  The rubber gasket popped off as I was pulling up on the plunger.  When it popped my left hand jerked down and knocked over the container.  I somehow managed to catch it with about 200 ml still in it. But the reason didn’t matter, ultimately I had just screwed up, big time.  

I spent the rest of the night cleaning up the mess and finishing prepping bottles with what fresh milk we had left.  I’ve gotten pretty good at maintaining a poker face when things really start going sideways in life, but I honestly felt terrible. I could only imagine how mad I’d be if I had spent that many hours doing ANYTHING, much less doing something that was providing food for our children.  But I learned something from this.  I need a fresh syringe so I don’t have to worry about it breaking, I need a more stable mixing container so nothing can tip it over, apparently I need to be even more careful than I already was being. 

I just really hope my wife understands how sorry I am, and how terrible I feel, and how much I wish I could just make it right.  Someone told me that one of the hardest things about parenting, is that it’s one of the few problems in life you can’t simply solve with more hard work. I get the feeling this is going to be the first in a long line of experiences where the best thing I can do is just maintain my composure and get back to the grind.

On the Upswing

I sat in the room waiting for the doctor to come back and tell me what was going on.  It felt like hours, but was more like 15 minutes.  The doctor walked in and I stood up.  “We fixed it.” She said.  They had to remove a clot that was preventing my wife’s uterus from contracting and that was what caused the hemorrhage.  All was well on that front. A few minutes later they rolled my wife back into the room. She was pretty heavily sedated at this point and there wasn’t much more excitement the rest of the night. 

I woke up the next morning and was pleasantly surprised to find my wife awake and feeling moderately better. I walked down to the NICU to see the girls and sit in on Doctors Rounds. After the experience the night before when my wife asked for an update on the girls, I was determined to give the best damn report possible. When the doctors came around I was ready. I asked questions, took notes, rattled off a few words I’d picked up from my wife over the years.  I had it covered no matter what question I got asked when I went back to the recovery room. 

On the way back in I ran into my wife’s nurse and thanked her for everything the night before. I also asked her, as a nurse, what info she would want to know if her kids were in the NICU and her husband was giving a report.  She said, “Well, why don’t you tell me what you know.” I started rattling off my notes and after a minute or so she looked at me and said, “Umm, yea that pretty much covers it. Are you in the medical profession?” I was flattered and told her that I wasn’t, but that my job as a Project Manager has made me really good at getting up to speed on topics that aren’t exactly my trade.  With that I walked back into the room and gave my wife the report… With no incident this time! By the afternoon the day after the girls were born my wife was doing well enough to make a trip to the NICU meet the girls.  Things were finally starting to look up.  I was really looking forward to the reunion…and was pretty sure I’d be crying again.  

Next Post: Crying Over Spilled Milk

Nothing Good Happens After 2:00 AM

I had left the twins back in the NICU and I headed to my wife’s recovery room.  I couldn’t wait to tell her all about our beautiful daughters. I could just picture her glowing as a proud new mom. I opened the door to her room…  

She WAS glowing, but not in the way I had pictured.  No, this was more like the glow from piece of iron that had just been pulled from a blast furnace. My wife was furiously clawing at her skin as her mother did her best to keep my wife calm. “Umm, what the hell is going on?” I asked. Her mom said that my wife had a bad reaction to the morphine that was used in her spinal anesthesia during the c-section. What was susposed to provide long term pain relief was also causing itching that would later be described as ‘the worst reaction to morphine the doctor had ever seen’.  Great, I thought.  This is going to be ‘fun’.

Between attempts to remove the top layer of skin from her body, my wife asked me how the girls were doing. I said, “They are doing good!” My wife looked at me, and I could see that the bellows of the proverbial blast furnace were being worked again.  “Good?!” she said, clearly irritated.  “What does good mean? That’s vague. I need to know how my babies are doing!!” This was clearly not an appropriate answer for someone who is a pediatric nurse. I started rattling off every medical stat I could think of.  “Well they are 3lb 7oz and 3lb 15oz, they are both on a CPAP machine to assist with breathing, they are getting IV fluids, their blood oxygen levels are over 90%, they are stable… and absolutely beautiful by the way!” This was apparently a more acceptable answer. 

Her mother and I spent the next several hours doing everything we could to keep my wife comfortable, and she finally fell asleep around 12:30 AM. Her mother left to go home and get some sleep, and I set up the pull-out couch and settled in for some much needed sleep.  

I awoke to my wife saying my name and I glanced at my watch, it was 2:30 AM.  “Well that was short lived.” I thought to myself. She called my name again, this time with more urgency. I jumped off the couch and walked towards her bed. “Something’s wrong.” She said, clearly in pain. “I hit the nurse call button. The nurse walked in and my wife said she was bleeding, a lot, and the pain was getting worse. A quick look confirmed this without a doubt. My wife was hemorrhaging and within moments the room was filled with more nurses and residents.

I won’t go into the gory details, but what happened next was not a pleasant experience. It’s pretty scary when you are forehead to forehead with the person you love most and see nothing but fear and pain in her eyes. Through all of this, somehow, I had this incredible sense of calm come over me. Maybe it was that the past week had made me numb, or maybe it was that I had absolute trust in the people working around me, but whatever it was, it was surreal.  The room was buzzing with activity and my wife was crying out in what sounded like level 10 pain as the medical team tried to resolve the issue while she was still in her room. This went on for what seemed like a few minutes until her own OB doctor came into the room.  She took one look at my wife and said that this wasn’t going to keep going on here. She was going to go back to the operating room so they could push stronger pain meds and fix the problem. I walked alongside the bed as they pushed my wife towards the OR and watched as the doors closed behind her. I was fully aware that there was a chance, no matter how small, that my wife wasn’t coming back down that hallway.  

I walked into the room and sat down, still calm for some reason. Alone, in a hospital room with no bed…

Next Post: On the Upswing