Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [78]
{CHAPTER 11}
Tranquillity
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents
common or unavoidable
WHO REMEMBERS ANYTHING MORE CLEARLY THAN THE BIRTH OF THEIR first child? I was in my third year of law school, twenty-five, and barely mature enough to babysit a goldfish when Kelsey arrived. I was not fit to be a parent. But there I was, on the cusp of one of life’s great adventures, unprepared, overwhelmed, and yet filled with expectation and hope.
{ Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.}
What I remember most are the plastic air hoses.
There had been some warning that Kelsey’s birth might not be without drama. Months earlier, while I was working at a summer job about an hour from our apartment, Michelle passed a blood clot. At first we feared she might miscarry, but to our relief the pregnancy continued. Then, when she was just thirty-two weeks along, Michelle’s water broke. The doctor was able to stop the delivery but put Michelle on her back in a hospital bed for the next month. We were young and scared, and still didn’t appreciate what was coming.
When the obstetrician feared she could delay the pregnancy no longer, she set a date for the birth: November 20, 1992. At 8:30 a.m., Michelle was induced.
By suppertime that night, we were still waiting.
It was apparent that things weren’t going according to plan. Michelle was in labor, but Kelsey wasn’t making her appearance. Worse, the fetal heart monitor was showing a heartbeat that was causing clear distress to the delivery team. Finally, as Kelsey made her way into the world, chaos (at least it seemed like chaos to me) ensued. Instead of “It’s a girl!” the only exclamations from the doctor were instructions to the neonatal intensive care nurses. Kelsey wasn’t breathing on her own, and I watched as a nurse, ironically the wife of a law school classmate, assisted her breathing with oxygen from a wall-mounted life support system. Michelle was nearly comatose from the medications she had received during the difficult birth.
Ultimately, some command from the doctor caused the entire delivery team to rush Kelsey from the room, warming bed and all. They wheeled her away so fast that the tubes attached to the oxygen mask pulled loose. They hadn’t even bothered to disconnect them. It was then that the seriousness—the desperation—of the situation struck home. It is those tubes that are clearly and indelibly etched in my memory.
And then I waited. For thirty minutes, I sat by Michelle’s side (she was blissfully asleep and less blissfully now battling some fever), wondering if my newborn daughter was alive or dead. That was not a good thirty minutes.
Finally, a nurse came and led me into the neonatal intensive care unit and sat me in a chair in a corner. The room was full of newborns like Kelsey, too feeble or small or ill to begin life on their own. All of them were hooked up to special monitoring equipment. There was a constant cacophony of alarms. “Don’t worry about those,” said the nurse, “they go off all the time. The doctor will call you over when he is ready.”
The doctor in question was bent over Kelsey’s warming bed, examining her intently. He poked and prodded her as I watched from a distance, relieved that my daughter was alive but terrified about what was to come next. Finally, he motioned for me to join him.
The first words he uttered—the first thing he said to this frightened, confused, unprepared father—were not “She’s going to be fine,” or “We’re very hopeful,” or even “This is your daughter.” The first words he said were, “Does anyone in your family have webbed toes?”
Thus began our life with Kelsey.
Later that night, my parents took me out for a bite to eat. Michelle was asleep, Kelsey was in the neonatal intensive care, and I was exhausted and scared and confused. My parents tried to calm my fears and ease my mind. As my mother, a very experienced nurse, talked about some of what the future might hold, I said, “It doesn’t matter if she’s physically handicapped (not even a word I’d use anymore), as long as she isn’t