What an amazing and touching story.
It was 1982 when my older daughter was born. We knew there was trouble when my then wife started bleeding. It was way too early.
We jumped in the car and raced to the hospital. They ushered her into an observation room while I filled out paperwork. About the time I was finished a nurse came out to tell me to hurry along if I wanted to be at the delivery. This was insane - the baby wasn’t due for another 10 weeks! They got me into the surgical gown and booties and down to the operating room just in time.
It was my first delivery so, like most new fathers, I didn’t have a clue what to expect. I especially didn’t expect to hear the sounds of shocked surprise from the nurse and an “Oh dear” from the doctor. Nor was I ready for them to whisk our baby away without the customary introduction.
“What the hell is going on?!” I demanded.
No one would answer my question.
A few minutes a very sober and pale doctor returned to the operating room and said, “Your baby is alive, but has some problems. We are doing all that we can....”
“Oh, and she’s a girl”.
An interminable period later the doctor returned to give me the answers I so desperately needed.
Our baby was a “preemie”, born ten weeks early. She only weighed 3.5 pounds. She had respiratory and pulmonary problems. And she had a cleft lip and palette. We got less than a minute to see her before she was loaded into an ambulance and rushed to Children’s Hospital.
I am humbled at the amazing job that our healthcare system did that day, and in the days to follow. My daughter survived, and flourished into a lovely young lady. And all without the heavy-handed and overbearing interference of the federal government.
Our first born was also 5-weeks premature. My wife's water broke during my graduation ceremony from grad school.
He was born with a perforated lung, low grade infection and other respiratory ailments. He too was whisked away to intensive care in an isolette to another hospital across town which specialized in "preemies."
He was in the children's intensive care unit for the better part of a 10 days.
Twenty-one years later... this preemie --- now a man, became an Eagle Scout as a senior in high school, and now serves in the US Marine Corps while earning his degree in Biotechnolgy.
With any luck at all getting the chit he needs from his commanding officer to do so, he intends to be at the March on DC with the rest of us on Saturday.
