Scenes I Want to Remember

Scenes I want to remember from the hospital:

1. G. saying to the woman who came to sign B. up for the newborn hearing test: "Now, we don't want him circumcised."

Woman: "Um, I just do the hearing tests. You should probably talk to the nurse."

He later told me, "Hey, to me she was just a hospital official and as far as I could tell, circumcision hadn't been covered by anyone yet."

Smart-Ass Wife: "Oh, here comes the lady with the meal tray. Make sure you tell her you don't want B. circumcised."

2. The NICU nurse, Ronald, who was a large black man with dreadlocks. The little preemies practically vanished in his big hands.

3. Our other NICU nurse, Roberto, finding out that I was a therapist and telling me his concern that his 3-year-old son was "too sensitive and emotional." "He's a caretaker," said Roberto, and then added, "Hmm. Well, I guess he might get that from me," as he fed a brand new baby.

4. A tiny, very unhappy-looking Indian woman in a sari who stood right outside the NICU door without moving. It appeared that her daughter had given birth, the baby was in the NICU and the rules didn't let grandparents in. She was not happy. The mother of the baby didn't seem very involved in the baby at all, and I wondered if the grandmother would end up raising it. The mother didn't want to carry the baby out of the hospital, saying her back hurt. I guess the father didn't want to, and hospital rules wouldn't let her mother carry the baby, so the unit clerk carried the baby to the car. She came back shaking her head. "They didn't even have the car seat buckled in."

5. After B. was readmitted to the NICU, I was walking back down the hallway to my room, lost in my thoughts, and a nurse came out of nowhere and without saying anything, wrapped her arms around me. I burst into tears.

6. One of the NICU nurses made it her personal mission during one of the shifts to give each baby in the intermediate unit a bath. The bath consisted of holding each baby under the faucet of a large industrial-size sink. It looked like she was washing heads of lettuce.

7. Whenever a baby's O2 monitor went off (and the monitors went off a lot), nervous parents would inevitably look up and stare at the numbers on the screen, prompting a chorus from all the nurses: "Look at your baby! Look at your baby!" Meaning that instead of relying on the monitor, we should check the baby's color to see if he was getting enough O2.

8. On the last day, we were moved to the "annex" because of construction outside the window. The annex is where they perform circumcisions and we saw the materials. There were baby-sized plastic trays that looked like baby-shaped jello molds, to hold their arms and legs still, and little metal rings of various sizes, each with a small razor blade in the middle. I have no opinion on other parents' decision to circ or not, but yikes. I don't even have one of those things, and I was crossing my legs, saying, "ouch!"

9. All the doctors, who, trying to be sympathetic, said, "Wow, a prolapsed cord? Phew, those are really scary. You're lucky they got him out in time." And the neurologist, who said, "If any problems show up on the EEG tomorrow, it's from something earlier in the pregnancy." Perhaps there's a better way to say you don't think there's any brain damage from oxygen deprivation at the birth?

I'll have to add more as I remember them. Sorry to subject you to all this, but this blog is pretty much the only way I'm going to remember anything.