Whisked Away

Because of Nathan's condition, it would be impossible for him to breathe once he was born. It was therefore critical to get him on a ventilator as soon as possible.

As Nathan struggled to breathe, I watched intently as Dr. Byrne worked quickly to clean Nathan up and tie and cut the cord--all in less than a minute! As soon as she was done, she wrapped Nathan in a soft cloth, handed him to the nurse, who then quickly passed him through the window to another nurse waiting in the NICU. She took Nathan away and then closed the window.

Bekah lay recovering. She hadn't even seen Nathan yet. I sat holding her hand as we waited for word on Nathan.

After a few minutes the window opened: "You baby weighs 6 lbs, 10.5 oz. He's on the ventilator, but they're having trouble getting the IV in." And the window closed again. In all likelihood, it probably wasn't that abrupt, but I'm not that far off either.

They're having trouble getting the IV in?!?! What does that mean?

We continued to wait, hoping each minute that the window would open and more news would come through it. Once or twice I even thought about opening the window myself to ask questions or to see what was going on. But I thought better of it, surmising that they needed to focus on Nathan and not on me, no matter how badly I wanted to know what was going on on the other side of the window.

Finally, the nurse opened the window again and let us know that they needed to transfer our son to Primary Children's and had called for the Life Flight team for transport. We would, however, get to see him before they took him over.