1 ~ (May 1983)
The Birth
A marvelous sense of wellbeing settled over me as I inhaled the fragrance of spring blossoms, practicing my LaMaze breathing “for real” this time. The midwife was already at our house making final preparations and had encouraged me to go out and enjoy the glorious afternoon. I sat on the college bleachers watching my husband run his daily two miles. I couldn’t join him on the track this time, but between contractions I thought about how blessed we were in our marriage, our work, our family. I was pleased that we had opted for a home birth, that I was free to savor the miracle taking place in my body without the constraints of a hospital. This was a family celebration, not a medical event!
As the tension eased from yet another, more urgent contraction, my mind ran over our arrangements at home. Everything seemed to be in order . . . except my garden--I hadn’t yet planted my garden! Planting had been scheduled for Saturday, and this was Thursday. Hmm, how soon, I wondered, would I be able to plant those already-tilled rows, following my carefully-designed plans? This was to be my biggest gardening effort to date. I intended to spend the spring and summer investing deeply in my roles of mother and homemaker, tending my babies and my garden, laying aside for a time my job as a nurse in order to nurture my family.
By the time Dave finished his jog and we slowly climbed the hill back to our house, the obstetrician had arrived and was sitting on the couch reading stories to our darling 21-month-old, Danny. At 8:30 p.m., we seated Danny in the rocking chair and presented him with a chubby, healthy, beautiful new baby sister. We named her Karis Joy, the Greek word for grace, a fitting tribute to our beneficent God.
I cherish this precious, peace-filled memory: the lull before a storm that was on nobody’s radar.
Friday was an exciting day of getting acquainted with this intriguing new member of our family. Strange—she never passed meconium. But the absence of dirty diapers received only passing notice, caught up as we were with celebrating fingers and toes, chubbiness and baldness and bright blue eyes.
Saturday, I felt so good that I went to a party, eager to show off our little treasure. But while we were there, Karis started vomiting! Not spitting up, no: this was bright yellow, with a force and trajectory unbelievable from such a small body. I too suddenly felt sick and exhausted. We had done too much, too soon, that was all, I told myself. A good sleep would cure everything.
Sunday, though, I spiked a high fever and quickly became very ill--so ill that I literally thought I was going to die. We resisted going to the hospital: I because my body ached so much that I didn’t want to move; Dave because events were happening too fast and he couldn’t grasp what was happening. Our idyllic world was shattering from every direction at once. How could this be?! I prided myself on never being sick. Dave had no idea how to care for a vomiting newborn and a toddler whose secure position at the center of the universe had been suddenly, permanently upended.
Frightened and frustrated, Dave as much as ordered me to snap out of this. Only when the doctor yelled at Dave over the phone that if I died it would be his fault, did he muster the courage to get me out of bed and into the car for the hour drive to the hospital in Evanston where our obstetrician practiced.
Before we left, Dave managed to track down my parents, who had just arrived in Florida from their missionary home in Guatemala. They were en route to Wheaton to attend my brother’s college graduation and wedding a few days hence. Perceiving my husband’s desperation, Mom caught the next flight to Chicago, while my dad continued with their planned visits to friends in Atlanta on his way north.
I, who had seldom been sick two days together, became personally acquainted with the amazing, transformative power of IV antibiotics. My life was given back to me. By Wednesday, when I was released from the hospital, I had swung from despair to an emotional high that I have never experienced before or since. I was giddy. The sky was blue, the grass was green, the spring flowers and new leaves were intoxicatingly lovely, my mother was a saint, my children were gorgeous, my little house was a palace.
In my euphoria, I could not, could not, absorb the fact that something might be seriously wrong with my newborn daughter. She had continued “throwing up,” as Mom and Dave referred to her projectile bilious vomiting. Well, I gaily concluded, it must be that she was reacting to the formula that my mother had fed her while I was in the hospital. Surely once she got that out of her system and again had access to breast milk, her stomach would settle. At Karis’s one-week checkup the next day, I downplayed the situation, quickly agreeing with the doctor that “all babies spit up.” I didn’t mention the complete absence of dirty diapers. Karis had lost weight, of course, but all babies lose weight their first week of life, and she had been on that formula that obviously didn’t suit her. She still looked great, at least to me, and the doctor did not seem concerned.
I know, I totally agree with you: it makes no sense that I was in such denial. I am a nurse, after all. Graduated with honors and all that.
The weekend was surreal. Since I was home and well again, Mom rejoined my dad at their scheduled missionary meetings. That left just Dave and me to clean up after Karis. She could hit objects several feet away. We kept our washing machine humming with the bedding, clothing, and even curtains that Karis targeted with her “throwing up.” We scrubbed walls, floors, and furniture.
She and I got into something of a rhythm. I figured out that if I let Karis nurse for two minutes, she would promptly throw up. But if I stopped her after just one minute, she didn’t—at least, not immediately.
How could Dave and I have been so thickheaded, so stuck in our belief that bad things happened to other people, not to us . . . ? I have no excuses and no explanations for our inertia. It is simply unbelievable that we plowed bull-headedly through that weekend without seeking medical help.
On Sunday afternoon, Karis’s godparents came to visit her. Holding Karis in his lap, her godfather encouraged us to be strong and have faith in God. As he spoke, Karis threw up in his face.
Monday morning, May 16th, I prepared to take 11-day-old Karis with me to attend my brother’s graduation from Wheaton College. Dad came by to pick us up. He had arrived in town the night before and had not yet met Karis. He took one look at her and said to me, in that Daddy-voice that one daren’t disobey, “You are not going to the graduation. You are getting in your car and taking that baby straight to the nearest doctor.”
Startled into sudden, desperate clarity, I drove quickly to the nearest clinic and walked in with Karis. “My baby needs to see a doctor,” I told the receptionist, ignoring the stares of the people in the waiting room. “No, we don’t have an appointment.”
The lady informed me that they didn’t take walk-ins; I would have to make an appointment for a few days later. I just stood there and looked at her, my voice flatly emphatic: “My baby must see a doctor now; she’s throwing up a lot.” (Almost I added, “My daddy said so.”)
Irritated, she said, “All babies throw up. Maybe you’re just not burping her properly.” Still I just stood there and looked at her. Finally she threw up her hands and walked to the back. I stood by the desk and waited, willing myself not to give way to the panic which threatened to unglue me ever since Dad had ordered us out the door of our house.
“All right, the doctor will see you. But just for a couple of minutes, because you’re interfering with the schedule of our patients.”
“Thank you. Two minutes is all we need.”
She glared at me as if I was nuts and showed me into the doctor’s office, not an examination room.
“So, what do you think is wrong with your baby?” he asked me sharply from the other side of his big desk. “Doctor, if you will give us two minutes, I will show you,” I responded.
While I nursed Karis, he sat drumming his fingers on the desk with his eyes fixed on the wall clock. “Time’s up,” he announced. I disengaged Karis and turned her around to face him. Right on cue, Karis projectile-vomited all over him, several feet away behind that big desk. Instantly he was all action, grabbing for the telephone and yelling for the nurse while he swiped at the bright yellow milk dripping down his face. After barking orders into the phone, he turned to me. “Drive straight to the emergency room at the hospital; there’s no time to call an ambulance. Your baby has a bowel obstruction and will be in surgery within the hour. They’ll just have to do x-rays first to determine the location of the obstruction. I’ll come to see you as soon as I can.”
It turned out that Dr. W was a wonderful, compassionate man, who gave us a lot of support through the confusion of the ensuing days at Central DuPage Hospital. The x-rays were perplexing. The classic signs of bowel obstruction were simply not there. The surgeons couldn’t operate, because there was no clear indication of what to operate on. Yet Karis was incapable of keeping anything down. And there were still no dirty diapers.
They made me stop nursing her, which was very hard on my hungry little girl, who now had a tube through her nose that was attached to suction to continually drain her tummy. I thought rebelliously that the nurses had put the tube in just to avoid the hassle of cleaning up after her. They had put her into an incubator and didn’t even want me to hold her. When I couldn’t handle Karis’s crying, I did sneak her out while the nurses weren’t there, desperate to comfort her but not wanting them to know I was disobeying orders. It was no secret really that I nursed her, since the drainage bottle attached to the NG tube started filling up with milk. I didn’t see what harm it could do her, and it sure made both of us feel better and allowed Karis to fall asleep. Karis was on IVs, of course, but sugar water in her veins wasn’t enough to assuage the hunger in her tummy.
Those days—and nights—at CDH, while the doctors puzzled over what to do, and David tried to juggle work and a toddler and hospital visits, were agonizing. I resisted giving in to the lurking feeling of terror, but how could I bear seeing my baby so unhappy, and getting only glimpses of my other baby, my confused, abandoned little Danny?
After a few days, Dr. W told me that he simply didn’t know how to help Karis and was sending us to the children’s hospital in Chicago. Did I want to drive or should he request an ambulance? I opted to drive. “Go to the ER; they’ll be expecting you. And, ummm, I think I should tell you: Don’t be put off by the strangeness of the big city hospital. These are good doctors—the best—and I think they’ll know what to do for Karis.”
Dr. R was waiting at the ER when we pulled up. Immediately he took Karis away from me and sent her off for x-rays. “This is an open and shut case,” he told me, “a classic bowel obstruction. We’ll take x-rays, locate the problem, operate, and that will be that. You’ll be home in two or three days. These small-town doctors, you know, don’t really know what they’re doing. Obviously they didn’t know how to take x-rays or didn’t know how to interpret them.” And off he hurried to prep for surgery.
Already I missed my small-town doctor. Dr. R might be one of “the best,” but I could sure do without his sarcasm and arrogance. But then, I had thought the same thing about Dr. W, during the two minutes that had turned him into our ally.
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