I’ve been to lots and lots of doctor appointments lately getting biopsies and preparing for my surgery. I really like my “girl doctor”, he isn’t rushed and is very personable. He also reads my medical records; like, actually reads them. The other day was no different. He was sitting there reading my records when he looks up and says “You know your son should have died.” Blank stare from me, so he continued “Your pregnancy with the prolapsed cord. Your son should not have survived that. He’s a walking miracle.” Sure, I had heard pediatricians say that he was very lucky, and one even remarked that he was one of the fortunate ones. But this is the first time a doctor had looked at me and said my son should have died. I was a little overwhelmed with sorrow, yet extreme thankfulness that he was here with us.
When my water had broken that night when I was pregnant with him I knew something was wrong. I could “feel” it, literally. I knew something had come rushing out of me with all the amniotic fluid. But it wasn’t until we got to the hospital and I told the receptionist at Labor and Delivery that “It feels like something is coming out of me” and they rushed me into a room and discovered the prolapsed cord that I knew what was wrong. I remember one of the nurses straddling my legs with her hand still “inside me”, trying to hold the cord away from Jon’s neck so that the blood supply could continue to deliver precious supplies to his brain. I remember several doctors rushing to my side as they wheeled me through L&D to an operating room, all the while baring everything for the world to see as the other nurse kept her hand up me. We must have been a site. I also remember the look on my husband’s face; panic and fear. I can also remember them telling him he couldn’t come in with us to the delivery room since this would be an emergency C-section. Then I was out. I would awaken in that same room quite a while later, alone and wondering if my baby had survived. I cannot even begin to describe the emotions I felt when I was finally told my son was not just alive, but healthy.
I know that his APGAR score in his medical records reads “4” but the doctor that came to check on him while we still in the hospital had said it was more like a “2 or 3”. The nurses and doctors that came to check on him over the next few days would say things like “It’s amazing he’s here” and “There are no signs of permanent brain damage, wow”. I always knew we had dodged a bullet.
But here sitting with my doctor I finally knew just how lucky we were.
I was able to keep it together until I got out to my car. Then I lost it. I really lost it. I cried out of happiness that my little man was alive and well today. And I cried for all the babies who didn’t survive a prolapsed cord.
