Instability, Chapter 3
Title: Instability, Chapter 3/?
Author: greenescrubs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angsty, baby!fic
Summary: Taking a quick peek, you can’t help but smile at the fine downy curls that cover her little head.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 3
With Wilson down the hall and the nurse occupied elsewhere, this is your first moment alone with your daughter and you feel your throat constrict from all the emotions building inside. You tighten your arms around the baby, drawing her even closer to you, and take a few shuddered breaths. You will your body to relax and focus on breathing slowly and deeply, in and out, through your nose.
You finally succumb to the hypnotic effect of the rocking chair, because you know this isn’t going to last and you want to stay in this peaceful oblivion as long as you can. Because, even though you’re always forcing others to face their reality, you’re pretty sure you’ve earned a few minutes of calm in this nice little bubble after the hell you’ve been through in the last 12 hours.
You continue rocking for a little longer, until your obsessive need to know everything gets the best of you and bursts the bubble. Your eyes blink open and you stare down at the little girl in your arms for a few seconds before raising your head and searching for that cheerful nurse.
You spot her obnoxiously bright yellow scrub top hovering over a bassinet across the room and watch her, hoping to get her attention. Glancing up, she catches you looking at her and gives you a big sunny smile before telling you she’ll be right over.
You turn back to the baby and, for the first time, you really look at her. You were too overwhelmed when she was first placed in your arms to take in more than her overall appearance. So, you start inspecting and memorizing every inch of her tiny body, wanting to know every minute detail, from the curve of her ears to the length of her toes.
The first thing your eyes focus on is her little nose, in part because all the tubes running up it are glaringly obvious and essential for her survival at this point.
And…possibly because you just might think her button nose is pretty damn cute, even though you’d never admit it to anyone.
Eyeing the nasal cannula and NG tube, you’re pretty impressed that your daughter is such a trooper for tolerating all that plastic stuffed up her tiny nostrils. She must have inherited her mother’s stoic nature, because you sure as hell would be clawing at your face and ripping the tubes out if you were in her place.
You move on to the rest of her face and notice the brown wisps of hair sticking out from under her knitted hat. You hesitate a moment before cautiously moving your hand to gently lift the side of her hat. Taking a quick peek, you can’t help but smile at the fine downy curls that cover her little head. You extend one finger to delicately stroke the side of her head and are amazed at how soft and silky her hair feels.
Just as you’re about to continue your little “inspection,” Nurse Sunshine makes her way over to the rocking chair.
“What can I do for you, Dr. House?” she asks you gently, with that perpetual smile on her face.
“I…uh…I…” you stumble like a complete idiot, “So…how’s she doing?” you finally manage to get out. “And don’t give me the watered-down version; I’m a doctor, I can handle the big boy words,” you say, trying to recover from your initial stutter with a little bit of snark. You’re not used to playing the role of patient’s family member and it’s throwing you way off balance.
The nurse takes a beat to blink at you and then says “Okay,” before pulling a chair over to sit next to you.
“She’s actually doing really well,” she begins. “Certainly much better than when she was delivered.”
“She wasn’t breathing,” you whisper almost inaudibly, recalling the overwhelming fear you felt at seeing your baby born blue, silent, and lifeless and watching the NICU team resuscitate her from where you stood beside the operating table.
“No, she wasn’t,” the nurse says softly as her smile fades for the first time. “Her one-minute APGAR was only 3, but luckily chest compressions and bagging her were enough to get her breathing started and she didn’t need to be intubated.”
Luckily? you think to yourself. Yeah, your daughter was so lucky that she needed a plastic bag pumping air into her lungs and fingers pounding on her chest to help her breathe. Still, you can’t deny the pure joy and relief you felt when you heard your baby let out a piercing cry for the first time.
“Once she was bagged, she pinked up and started moving around and her five-minute APGAR was much better at a 7. Right now, she’s stable breathing on her own with help from the nasal cannula…”
“How much oxygen is she on?” you cut her off sharply, not wanting her to skimp on any details.
She looks slightly taken aback by your abruptness before she regains her professionalism. “We have her on 3 liters at 40% at the moment. Her blood gases improved with the oxygen and her O2 sats are around 90. We ordered a chest x-ray and we’ll be monitoring her closely for any signs of RDS.”
She pauses, allowing you take everything in as your gaze drops back down to the small bundle in your arms.
You actually are grateful she’s only requiring nasal oxygen and not a ventilator for two reasons: one, it means she’s doing okay, all things considered, and two, the cannula is small enough that you can still see most of her face, except for where the tubing is taped on her cheeks.
There are tubes shoved up her nose and she’s wrinkled and small and has that typical newborn alien-look going on, and yet you’re amazed at how utterly beautiful and…perfect she is. You always thought newborns were kind of weird looking and never understood how parents could gush about how their bald, cone-headed baby that resembled Elmer Fudd was oh-so adorable.
But, here you are, staring down at your baby girl and overwhelmed by this beautiful creature who grew from a single cell. Thirty-three weeks later, and here she is, a complete human being, just small and not quite fully mature.
God, she’s so small.
“How much does she weigh?” you ask, raising your eyes back up to the nurse.
“3 pounds, 8 ounces.”
Whoa, she’s even tinier than you expected.
“She is slightly small for her gestational age, probably because of intrauterine growth restriction related to...”
“Decreased placental perfusion from the preeclampsia,” you finish for her.
She nods her head in agreement before continuing. “Yes, most likely. We’ll be giving her gavage feedings through the NG tube for a week or two, until she’s mature enough to coordinate breathing and sucking and swallowing from a bottle.”
You stay silent, understanding everything she’s saying, but trying hard to digest the gravity of your daughter’s situation. This isn’t how things were supposed to happen. You were expecting Allison to have a smooth birth (okay, maybe not as smooth, if she ended up following her plan of a natural birth instead of listening to your advice about the perks of an epidural), and that you’d bring home a healthy seven-pound baby. But instead, everything went horribly wrong, like straight out of some fucking Lifetime movie. And you hate that everything is now out of your control.
When a few minutes have passed and you still haven’t said anything, the nurse carries on.
“Our goals right now are to help her gain weight and to make sure she’s breathing adequately and getting enough oxygen. She’ll also have to stay in the isolette until she’s able to maintain her body temperature. Her energy needs to be focused on growing and breathing, not on keeping herself warm. And we just need to take things one day at a time.”
“Right,” you respond softly, bobbing your head up and down in agreement.
"Have you picked out a name for her?"
You stare at her, almost confused by her question. "Um, no...not yet." You and Allison had tossed around a few names, but you still hadn't decided on one, or more accurately, you couldn't agree on one. And with everything that happened today, you sure as hell aren't going to name her without Allison. At this point, you'd probably be okay with whatever Allison wanted to name her.
"That's okay. Just let me know when you've picked something out." Standing up, the nurse places a gentle hand on your shoulder and gives you a warm smile. “And please let me know if you need anything.”
As she turns to leave, your voice stops her. “Uh…what was your name again?”
“Suzie,” she smiles. Nurse Suzie Sunshine, you think. Perfect.
“Thank you, Suzie,” you say quietly but sincerely.
“You’re welcome, Dr. House,” she replies before going off to check on another baby.
And you and your daughter are alone, again. She has one hell of a long road ahead of her, but she’s here and she’s stable and you’re going to take comfort in that.
If Allison has taught you anything, it’s that it’s okay to risk being happy. You took a huge risk opening yourself up to Allison two years ago, and things turned out okay...actually, better than okay. So, for probably only the second time in your mostly miserable life, you’re going to try to let yourself be happy… because you’re pretty sure your daughter is worth it. You owe it to her, to Allison - hell, you owe it to yourself - to be happy that your baby is alive and breathing, even if she is two months early and can’t fully function on her own.
To be grateful that she and Allison didn’t die together in the OR as you stood by and watched.
You don’t know how Allison’s doing or if she even survived the surgery, but you do have your daughter. It goes against everything you’ve ever believed in, but you’re desperately trying to focus on the good, to focus all your energy on your baby girl, on loving her and keeping her safe, because it’s all you can do right now….
…until Wilson comes back and you find out what the future holds for your -- dare you say it --family.
_________________________________________________________________________
Some terms related to Baby House's condition....
APGAR: A score out of 10 given to babies at 1-minute and 5-minutes after delivery. They are given a score from 0-2 for each of five categories: heart rate, breathing, crying, muscle tone, and irritability, for a max score of 10. For example, a baby born blue would get a 0 while a nice pink baby would get a 2. A baby with a total score of 6 or below is in trouble.
RDS: Respiratory Distress Syndrome often occurs in premature infants whose lungs are not mature enough to breathe on their own.
IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction): This is when a fetus' growth is restricted and they are smaller than they should be. It often occurs when there is decreased blood flow from the mom's placenta to the baby, so the baby is not receiving enough nutrients to grow. In Cameron's case, IUGR was caused by preeclampsia - a condition of severe high blood pressure that is dangerous to mom and baby. High blood pressure restricts blood flow to the baby. More on that in the next chapter.
NG Tube: Naso-gastric feeding tube that goes up the nose and down into the stomach to provide liquid nourishment.
-------------
Thank you to all who have read and commented so far. Your comments are greatly appreciated and give me motivation to continue the story!
Author: greenescrubs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angsty, baby!fic
Summary: Taking a quick peek, you can’t help but smile at the fine downy curls that cover her little head.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 3
With Wilson down the hall and the nurse occupied elsewhere, this is your first moment alone with your daughter and you feel your throat constrict from all the emotions building inside. You tighten your arms around the baby, drawing her even closer to you, and take a few shuddered breaths. You will your body to relax and focus on breathing slowly and deeply, in and out, through your nose.
You finally succumb to the hypnotic effect of the rocking chair, because you know this isn’t going to last and you want to stay in this peaceful oblivion as long as you can. Because, even though you’re always forcing others to face their reality, you’re pretty sure you’ve earned a few minutes of calm in this nice little bubble after the hell you’ve been through in the last 12 hours.
You continue rocking for a little longer, until your obsessive need to know everything gets the best of you and bursts the bubble. Your eyes blink open and you stare down at the little girl in your arms for a few seconds before raising your head and searching for that cheerful nurse.
You spot her obnoxiously bright yellow scrub top hovering over a bassinet across the room and watch her, hoping to get her attention. Glancing up, she catches you looking at her and gives you a big sunny smile before telling you she’ll be right over.
You turn back to the baby and, for the first time, you really look at her. You were too overwhelmed when she was first placed in your arms to take in more than her overall appearance. So, you start inspecting and memorizing every inch of her tiny body, wanting to know every minute detail, from the curve of her ears to the length of her toes.
The first thing your eyes focus on is her little nose, in part because all the tubes running up it are glaringly obvious and essential for her survival at this point.
And…possibly because you just might think her button nose is pretty damn cute, even though you’d never admit it to anyone.
Eyeing the nasal cannula and NG tube, you’re pretty impressed that your daughter is such a trooper for tolerating all that plastic stuffed up her tiny nostrils. She must have inherited her mother’s stoic nature, because you sure as hell would be clawing at your face and ripping the tubes out if you were in her place.
You move on to the rest of her face and notice the brown wisps of hair sticking out from under her knitted hat. You hesitate a moment before cautiously moving your hand to gently lift the side of her hat. Taking a quick peek, you can’t help but smile at the fine downy curls that cover her little head. You extend one finger to delicately stroke the side of her head and are amazed at how soft and silky her hair feels.
Just as you’re about to continue your little “inspection,” Nurse Sunshine makes her way over to the rocking chair.
“What can I do for you, Dr. House?” she asks you gently, with that perpetual smile on her face.
“I…uh…I…” you stumble like a complete idiot, “So…how’s she doing?” you finally manage to get out. “And don’t give me the watered-down version; I’m a doctor, I can handle the big boy words,” you say, trying to recover from your initial stutter with a little bit of snark. You’re not used to playing the role of patient’s family member and it’s throwing you way off balance.
The nurse takes a beat to blink at you and then says “Okay,” before pulling a chair over to sit next to you.
“She’s actually doing really well,” she begins. “Certainly much better than when she was delivered.”
“She wasn’t breathing,” you whisper almost inaudibly, recalling the overwhelming fear you felt at seeing your baby born blue, silent, and lifeless and watching the NICU team resuscitate her from where you stood beside the operating table.
“No, she wasn’t,” the nurse says softly as her smile fades for the first time. “Her one-minute APGAR was only 3, but luckily chest compressions and bagging her were enough to get her breathing started and she didn’t need to be intubated.”
Luckily? you think to yourself. Yeah, your daughter was so lucky that she needed a plastic bag pumping air into her lungs and fingers pounding on her chest to help her breathe. Still, you can’t deny the pure joy and relief you felt when you heard your baby let out a piercing cry for the first time.
“Once she was bagged, she pinked up and started moving around and her five-minute APGAR was much better at a 7. Right now, she’s stable breathing on her own with help from the nasal cannula…”
“How much oxygen is she on?” you cut her off sharply, not wanting her to skimp on any details.
She looks slightly taken aback by your abruptness before she regains her professionalism. “We have her on 3 liters at 40% at the moment. Her blood gases improved with the oxygen and her O2 sats are around 90. We ordered a chest x-ray and we’ll be monitoring her closely for any signs of RDS.”
She pauses, allowing you take everything in as your gaze drops back down to the small bundle in your arms.
You actually are grateful she’s only requiring nasal oxygen and not a ventilator for two reasons: one, it means she’s doing okay, all things considered, and two, the cannula is small enough that you can still see most of her face, except for where the tubing is taped on her cheeks.
There are tubes shoved up her nose and she’s wrinkled and small and has that typical newborn alien-look going on, and yet you’re amazed at how utterly beautiful and…perfect she is. You always thought newborns were kind of weird looking and never understood how parents could gush about how their bald, cone-headed baby that resembled Elmer Fudd was oh-so adorable.
But, here you are, staring down at your baby girl and overwhelmed by this beautiful creature who grew from a single cell. Thirty-three weeks later, and here she is, a complete human being, just small and not quite fully mature.
God, she’s so small.
“How much does she weigh?” you ask, raising your eyes back up to the nurse.
“3 pounds, 8 ounces.”
Whoa, she’s even tinier than you expected.
“She is slightly small for her gestational age, probably because of intrauterine growth restriction related to...”
“Decreased placental perfusion from the preeclampsia,” you finish for her.
She nods her head in agreement before continuing. “Yes, most likely. We’ll be giving her gavage feedings through the NG tube for a week or two, until she’s mature enough to coordinate breathing and sucking and swallowing from a bottle.”
You stay silent, understanding everything she’s saying, but trying hard to digest the gravity of your daughter’s situation. This isn’t how things were supposed to happen. You were expecting Allison to have a smooth birth (okay, maybe not as smooth, if she ended up following her plan of a natural birth instead of listening to your advice about the perks of an epidural), and that you’d bring home a healthy seven-pound baby. But instead, everything went horribly wrong, like straight out of some fucking Lifetime movie. And you hate that everything is now out of your control.
When a few minutes have passed and you still haven’t said anything, the nurse carries on.
“Our goals right now are to help her gain weight and to make sure she’s breathing adequately and getting enough oxygen. She’ll also have to stay in the isolette until she’s able to maintain her body temperature. Her energy needs to be focused on growing and breathing, not on keeping herself warm. And we just need to take things one day at a time.”
“Right,” you respond softly, bobbing your head up and down in agreement.
"Have you picked out a name for her?"
You stare at her, almost confused by her question. "Um, no...not yet." You and Allison had tossed around a few names, but you still hadn't decided on one, or more accurately, you couldn't agree on one. And with everything that happened today, you sure as hell aren't going to name her without Allison. At this point, you'd probably be okay with whatever Allison wanted to name her.
"That's okay. Just let me know when you've picked something out." Standing up, the nurse places a gentle hand on your shoulder and gives you a warm smile. “And please let me know if you need anything.”
As she turns to leave, your voice stops her. “Uh…what was your name again?”
“Suzie,” she smiles. Nurse Suzie Sunshine, you think. Perfect.
“Thank you, Suzie,” you say quietly but sincerely.
“You’re welcome, Dr. House,” she replies before going off to check on another baby.
And you and your daughter are alone, again. She has one hell of a long road ahead of her, but she’s here and she’s stable and you’re going to take comfort in that.
If Allison has taught you anything, it’s that it’s okay to risk being happy. You took a huge risk opening yourself up to Allison two years ago, and things turned out okay...actually, better than okay. So, for probably only the second time in your mostly miserable life, you’re going to try to let yourself be happy… because you’re pretty sure your daughter is worth it. You owe it to her, to Allison - hell, you owe it to yourself - to be happy that your baby is alive and breathing, even if she is two months early and can’t fully function on her own.
To be grateful that she and Allison didn’t die together in the OR as you stood by and watched.
You don’t know how Allison’s doing or if she even survived the surgery, but you do have your daughter. It goes against everything you’ve ever believed in, but you’re desperately trying to focus on the good, to focus all your energy on your baby girl, on loving her and keeping her safe, because it’s all you can do right now….
…until Wilson comes back and you find out what the future holds for your -- dare you say it --family.
_________________________________________________________________________
Some terms related to Baby House's condition....
APGAR: A score out of 10 given to babies at 1-minute and 5-minutes after delivery. They are given a score from 0-2 for each of five categories: heart rate, breathing, crying, muscle tone, and irritability, for a max score of 10. For example, a baby born blue would get a 0 while a nice pink baby would get a 2. A baby with a total score of 6 or below is in trouble.
RDS: Respiratory Distress Syndrome often occurs in premature infants whose lungs are not mature enough to breathe on their own.
IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction): This is when a fetus' growth is restricted and they are smaller than they should be. It often occurs when there is decreased blood flow from the mom's placenta to the baby, so the baby is not receiving enough nutrients to grow. In Cameron's case, IUGR was caused by preeclampsia - a condition of severe high blood pressure that is dangerous to mom and baby. High blood pressure restricts blood flow to the baby. More on that in the next chapter.
NG Tube: Naso-gastric feeding tube that goes up the nose and down into the stomach to provide liquid nourishment.
-------------
Thank you to all who have read and commented so far. Your comments are greatly appreciated and give me motivation to continue the story!