"He was alive yesterday,"
The young father chokes on tears, clutches the tiny bundle to his chest. “He’s still warm, can’t you blow more air in his lungs?”
The baby is warm because I have been holding him for the last 30 minutes after we stopped the code, I didn’t want to hand them a cold baby. I can’t explain to this man that his baby’s blood pH was 6.5 and that he was in asystole for over 30 minutes despite double digit amounts of epinephrine and that we could blow air in his lungs forever and he would never ever wake up.
He’s swaddled to hide the bruises from the 90+ minutes of chest compression and vigorous stimulation, the multiple attempts at getting IV access in veins that were too small, the multiple intubation attempts.
The hat falls off. I pick it up and place it back on over dark curls. The father is still weeping.
I leave the family to grieve. I sit in the small resident room. Now what. My salad is sitting where I left it when I ran to the nursery, I eat and cry. I still have patients to see, healthy pink crying babies with chubby legs. People are joking in the hall. I see a picture of my own baby boy on my phone’s lock screen. I feel crushing emptiness.
To everyone with children: hold your babies tight. Even when they frustrate you. Even when you don’t like them in the moment. Because right now a family has a baby room all set up, baby clothes laid out, a car seat, everything…. and in two days their baby is going to be buried instead of going home with them.
gracieabrams
germansingergirl
titsay
stormborns
