Arriving at Sacred Heart was terrifying and calming at the same time. Yes, I had made it the entire ride without disaster. I was at a hospital that could and would take care of Zoey. I had reached the point that I didn’t care what I had to go through as long as she was ok. I was where we would develop a plan and things were going to be ok. But I was also terrified because I didn’t know how she was doing. I didn’t know what the next hours, days, weeks held for us but knew it would be a hard ride. And for the first little while, I was there alone again. Nick hadn’t ridden in the ambulance with us. He was following behind in the only car we had at the time. (Which was crazy because he had borrowed a truck from his boss an hour before I called him to come to the hospital. We had to leave the truck there in our haste to make it to Sacred Heart).
The first night was such organized chaos. There were so many people in and out of my room. And it was very touch and go. I was hooked up to several machines and not allowed to get out of bed without having a nurse there. People were in and out of my room all night. It was bad enough that the family across the hall ended up having their baby. I know because I later became amazingly close friends with this family, but we will meet them later.
When we made it through the first night we knew we would be ok. Nick had joined me and they had arranged for a cot for him in the room. We knew that he would have to go back to work after the weekend but knew we were where we needed to be. Zoey had an ultrasound everyday to make sure she was doing ok and 24 hour monitoring. We actually settled into a really random calm routine. We learned how to crochet baby hats for the NICU kids (we didn’t have anything else to do). Nick played his Gameboy and I slept. On the second day my parents arrived. I’m surprised mom got dad to wait that long. I had drs and nurses coming by frequently. And I remembered I would only allow them to speak positively about Zoey. In fact when the NICU specialty dr came in to “prepare” us for things that might go wrong with Zoey (i.e., brain bleeds, mortality rates,…) I wouldn’t listen to him and made him leave. I know it wasn’t my smartest move so the next day I apologized for my behavior and spoke with him. I got numbers that I needed. I learned that 28 weeks was the magic number. Her probability for survival improved drastically by making it to that week of gestation. So that was my goal. I had 28 written on the whiteboard directly in front of me. It was what I needed to know. I have always been better I had a specific goal in mind. So 28 it was!! 28 was the magic number and I WAS going to make it for Zoey.