Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Our Birth Story

Episode Date: September 2, 2014

Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: We had a baby. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

The medicines, the medicines, the escalators, my cop, for the mouth! Hello everybody and welcome to Saw Bones. I'm Eradol Tours of Miss Guy at Medicine. I am Yorko host Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. Hello Sydney. Hi Justin. It's a pleasure to be recording our program again today with a few weeks off. That's true. Well we had kind of a big event. Yeah this is technically, this is technically now a three-person podcast, but one of the people does not contribute, except you may hear some mild grunting and or crying, hopefully not much of the latter. No, no. She's eating right now.

It's her favorite thing to do, so she should be quiet, but no promises. No promises, but we will do our best with this. You know, you do in audio production, you do everything you can to try to eliminate extraneous noises, you know, I've turned off ceiling fans, etc., etc. And I think we've just introduced a pretty big risk factor for it. Well, at this point, I'm hoping the only noise she'll make is maybe a burp. Maybe a burp, maybe a burp shortly. Maybe something else, folks. Yeah. I'll probably edit that out. See you probably never know. Yeah. When I will say this when she fills her diaper, there is no mistaking that

that has happened. You will not have to turn your your MP3 player up. You will know that that has been the case. Anyway, we wanted to do kind of a different episode this week. And if you're not into it, that is totally cool. We will be back next week with with a regular solbona episode, but um, yeah, next week we'll return to talking about, you know, various animal poops that you can put on wounds and etc, etc. But strange compounds you can eat. We did have a we've been talking a lot about birth and pregnancy and we had a Medical experience for for a week of our lives

Yeah, we've talked a lot about and I think a lot of my opinions and preferences, especially for my own personal birth plan if you, probably came through in a lot of our episodes before. And so it would not be surprising, I think, to many of you if our birth experience was very important to me, and that maybe the fact that it didn't go exactly or at all, as we thought it would or had planned, would be kind of a big event for both of us. I feel like we learned a lot in the week that we were sort of getting Charlie home. And I thought maybe as a medical experience and we talked a lot about birth that would be interesting to folks. And at the very least it will, I think it will be good for us to kind of talk

through it. So there's a lot of serious parts. There are probably a few funny parts now in retrospect. They weren't funny at the time, but I think they're funny now. Some were funny at the time. But if you're not in for something like that, you can, you don't have to listen. It's no problem. We are feelings will be heard. We'll come back next week and be funny.

So Sydney, why don't you take me to the morning of August 12th? Let me say one thing real quick. Okay. Before we do that. Okay. The story ends with this wonderful little perfect baby that's sitting in my lap right now, dosing between meals. And so it's got a happy end. Yeah, so everything. Everything. It all works out. It all works out in the end. There are no sad endings here. Okay, so August 12th, we went for our appointment with my obstetrician. And at this point, let me just say, we had been prepared by our doctor that a vaginal delivery was, I don't even say,

probably not, was not a possibility for me. Yeah, yeah. And, and I may have mentioned this before, but my plan, my birth plan, had been not only, of course, to have a vaginal delivery, but I didn't want to use any pain meds. I wanted to stay at home as long as possible. I wanted to go through as much of labor here in the comfort of my home with Justin and then come in when you know I was in active labor my water broke or something to that effect. So the idea that not only was I'm not going to have that experience which was important to me,

but that my doctor was saying, look, Charlie our our baby girl had not engaged, which means that her head was not down low enough in my pelvis for her to be able to be born vaginally. Now, a lot of people who are medical are probably listening and going, well, sometimes babies don't engage until labor. But there are a couple of complicating factors. One, she was very high, as I mentioned, she was not engaged. And two, I have, well, what my doctor politely told me was not a 10 pound pelvis,

which is a reference to the fact that my doctor actually delivered me. Yeah. You know, 31 years ago, clearly. And I was almost 10 pounds. So I have a small pelvis and I was having... I think your pelvis is perfect, by the way, for voting. Thank you for approving of my pelvis.

I mean, I do. And we were having a rather large child. Yeah. She's a big baby. She was a big baby. And she was not coming down and I had had many, many contractions, some of which you have heard on contractions, some of which you have heard on our show, some of which I've experienced. I have my hair. Of podcast, podcasting with you.

But despite all these contractions, she was not coming down and he had prepared us for a couple of weeks that he thought, you know, inducing my labor was not going to be helpful that it would put me through a lot of agony for no, you know, forcing my labor was not going to be helpful, that it would put me through a lot of agony for no, you know, for no benefit and possible risk to her. And that a C section was probably what we're going to have to do. So we scheduled a C section actually for the day of that appointment on August 12th. I was past dates at that point and she was still floating, floating around in there in her swimming pool.

And Sydney has, she doesn't get paid medically from her gig, so she was accruing using accrued vacation and sick time. So she had already taken off of work a week or so prior, a couple of weeks prior. So the longer we waited the less time that we were going to have at home, which I mentioned only because it's interesting when you read a lot of like stats and figures and things and you make these assumptions about why people do certain things. But until you're like actually in a scenario, it's hard to say what you would do in any given scenario, but this seemed like we knew we were going to need the C section, so we figured let's get this baby out and let's get this baby home.

Yeah, and I'm sure again, I know there are probably people listening who are thinking, oh, well, you should have done this or you should have done that, or that that's what the medical establishment will tell you. I think that's where it's really important that you have a provider, whether that be an obstetrician, a family doctor, a midwife, somebody who you really trust. The fact is that I had complete faith, I think you did too, in our doctor. When he looked at me and said, this is what we're going to need to do. I believed him. Now, and just to add on to that, just to put a final cap for in that,

if you were thinking about maybe like second guessing, some of the things we're going to tell you in this episode, don't bother. Seriously, we don't. We love you. We appreciate the feedback. We really are not interested in your input in our decision. I will agonize over that for probably the rest of my life. Yeah, we don't need any help there. There's nothing you could say to me that I haven't already said to myself a million times over. I think at the end of the day, it was the decision we had to make. There are a percentage of women, as we said in our last podcast about C-sections,

that are going to need C-sections. And I think I was one of them. And we're both here and safe. So hey. So we made the appointment for that afternoon. And he saw us at like nine or no eight. And then we had our C-sections scheduled for four. Now that being said, we were already freaked of freaked out about it, but around four, there was another C section going on, so we ended up waiting another three hours just

on pins and needles, like waiting for that to happen, which is fine. I mean, it's scheduling whatever. It was just very, it was already like a little tense in the room, and then it was like, oh, yeah, you just got to wait a few more hours. And all of our family was there. Yeah. But it was getting a little intense with all of us in there waiting and then it was like, oh yeah, you just got to wait a few more hours. And all of our family was there. Yeah. But it was getting a little intense with all of us in there waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting.

So and I let me just say this, I although I am a physician, I have had very little interaction with the medical field from the other side. Yeah, I am not. I have no. I've never had a surgery. I've never broken a bone. I've never had a lengthy stay in the hospital. Well, since I was a little kid, I have no I've never had a surgery. I've never broken a bone I've never had a lengthy stay in the hospital. Well since I was a little kid. I have no This was this was not easy for me. I don't even go to the doctor really. No

They're quacks you can't go to doctors. So can't trust any of them. Okay, so I'm gonna sort of skim through this next part just because it's still pretty like It's weird. We've finally got the C-section at 7. I walk in and see Sydney. She's on the table. I kind of hurt my eyes because I don't want to see any of the gully works kind of thing. I'm just mainly focused on her head parts because those are unobstructed with blood and and and doctors and stuff. So I go down and sit next to her and...

On my end at this point, by the way, it has been pretty, pretty scary. The OR, of course, is an OR, so it's cold and white and sterile, which I'm glad it's sterile, don't get me wrong. And they had had to give me the kind of block that basically numbs and paralyzes everything from about my chest down. So I cannot feel or move anything, which is pretty unnerving if you've never experienced that. So the baby comes out. Yes.

The baby is out. And Charlie, our baby. Charlie, our baby is out. And we see Charlie, our baby. Charlie our baby and she's a company by a loud splash. There's a lot of splash of Sydney's water. There's a lot of water. A lot of water.

But the baby comes out and from our perspective, things seem cool for about 30 seconds. Maybe that I don't know. Maybe that one around that and she looks beautiful. They hold her up over the the tarp the sheet there. She's huge and gorgeous and she looks like Justin right away right away. That was my first thought. She looks just like that. That's it. Because she was spitting up but at the time. But about 30 seconds in, it becomes sort of clear that something isn't exactly right. I still hadn't heard her cry. Yeah.

That was what queued me in. Yeah. I knew they were, they do what they always do, which is take her right over to the little baby warmer and kind of scrub her down and move her around a little bit to make sure she's crying and screaming. And they do the apgar scores, which are scores of kind of the baby's breathing and tone.

And basically, a number that indicates how well the baby's doing within the first minute and five minutes of life. Friends, I don't have the words to describe what those few minutes were like. There were a lot of people in the room that were poking and prodding our baby and there were cords and wires and things

and talking in hushed tones. And Sidney and I didn't know what was going on and I will live the rest of my life and never experience the blend of joy and sheer white knuckles terror that those few minutes entailed. Yeah, I have to say, I'm kind of, I think you can, this is probably fair to say, I'm a little bit of a control freak.

And to have, I knew that something bad was going on and to not be able to move and to also know that even if I could move, if I did move, I would die, because my guts were hanging out. That it was a terrible moment. I don't know how long it felt like an eternity. It felt like years passed. Years, yeah, years. Stars were born and died in the time that.

I held Charlie real quick. I, we both got to give her kiss and then they whisked her away. And that is when the joy part kind of disappeared. And then it was just the sheer white knuckle there. Yes. And helplessness. So there was like a good half hour where Sydney was getting soed up and I was with Sydney and we just didn't

know what was going on with the baby. That was the worst 30 minutes of my life. We get Sydney back in the in the OR. You still can't move. No, I still can't move and at that point and I don't think I told you this, I actually couldn't see very well because they let me leave my glasses on during the C section and I was crying and I don't know if you've ever tried to cry while laying flat on your back and looking straight up. Not good. It doesn't work very well and my glasses were all dirty and I couldn't see anything and I couldn't feel anything and I couldn't move and it was it was terrible. So I got to go up and see Charlie they at they let me come up and I had to go up without Sydney

because Sydney was still in recovery and that was really, really, really tough. I go upstairs and here's the thing about this story and the reason why as hard as this all was for us, you should know that things never really get that serious. And this is why I want everybody to keep in perspective. If you've been through something like this, and your child did have some more serious issues, I can't fathom how much harder that would be on you.

I'm not trying to say that this was like the worst case scenario by any, starting to the imagination, but I'm trying to be honest about what my experience was, because it's the only one that I have context for. No, in many ways we were very lucky. Absolutely, and we realized that fully. So I went upstairs and saw the baby and they had her, they were giving her blow by oxygen, right? Which is just kind of oxygen being blown through a tube

that's kind of laid next to her face. Right. Which is, it's a good sign because that's not, as you can imagine, you're not getting a whole lot of oxygen that way. So if that's all she's requiring, that means she's not doing too bad. So what was going on?

Here's the way I understand it in layman's terms, and I'm assuming most of you are layman. So sometimes when you do a C-section on a baby, since it's not going through the birth canal, it doesn't get squeezed. And when it gets squeezed, a lot of the liquid that is still remaining the baby gets in the lungs gets squeezed out.

So that didn't happen for Chuck. So Chuck had a lot of fluid in her lungs. And Sidney also had a lot of excess fluid, correct? Like in your tummy. And we didn't know that ahead of time. A lot of women will know ahead of time. You know, you you may have been told like you didn't have enough water, you had too much water. We didn't know that ahead of time. It wasn't there on our 30-week ultrasound and we hadn't had one sense and that's kind of it. Right, so I go up there and basically the, I never got anything from anybody that told me her life was in danger, but she wasn't doing great.

I mean, she was sick, I guess, for a lack of a better term. She wasn't good. She had fluid interalungs. She was having trouble breathing. She was having these bells of tecipnia. Right, which means fast breathing, which is a sign that they worry about. And that was the biggest thing. Initially, we thought it was something called transient tecipnia of the newborn, which you may have heard that before, if you're medical, if not, if you had a big baby or a C-section baby, you may have this it just means just like Justin said the fluid in the lungs.

She's breathing too fast. Our thought was they'll get the fluid off and you know she'll She'll cough it all up and she'll be fine and that was initially kind of what they were saying You know this baby probably will spend a night in the NICU. Right and go back to the regular nursery So we were kind of going back and forth. I was having a hard time like Imagine this friends your wife has just been moved into a mother baby room, which is not the room she was in before she had the baby. This is sort of like a recovery room where mother and baby are supposed to be in together.

There's a chair that folds out that I can sleep on, city's in her bed, city's still immobilized from the, you know, the meds from her surgery. So I was kind of having a tough time knowing where I should be because my baby was upstairs and my wife was downstairs and they both kind of needed me. And I really wish that there had been two of me, but there wasn't. So I was kind of running back and here's the thing. These two areas were very far from each other. They were on separate floors down many, many hallways.

It was a good 10 minute walk between the baby and the wife. So that was an unpleasant few hours. And Sydney still had an eaten and not just like that day, but since midnight, the night the night before because of the surgery. So she was, I'm sure, starving and couldn't drink liquid either. So she hadn't had liquid since midnight. Now, to be fair, I was incredibly nauseous as the anesthesia started burning off. Yes.

So that was okay. As soon as Sydney was in the mother baby room, she insisted that she needed to go see Charlie. So there was, um, I don't know how to describe the feeling. It wasn't, I need to go see her because I love her because, like, medically or I'm worried it was beyond anything like that. I don't know how to, how to articulate the fact that, um, the, the idea that I was somewhere that she wasn't was so I couldn't understand it. I couldn't wrap my head around why she wasn't with me and I Desperately needed to I didn't want to and I needed to get to her

So that's the serious part the funny part is that we basically to her. So that's the serious part. The funny part is that we basically conned two nurses into coming into the room and bringing in a wheelchair and Sydney stuck in walks and these two nurses basically had to try to deadlift Sydney and put her into the wheelchair. I had no, I mean, I was total dead weight. I couldn't do anything. Flail her arms a little bit. Yeah. And and as soon as they got her seated, she threw up. So it was not a possibility. Every time I set up, I puked. I couldn't sit up.

So it was bad. It was bad. They don't like to let people in the NICU who are puking everywhere. So that night is still kind of a blur for me. We didn't sleep much. We held off until, I mean, we basically stayed up until your...

The anesthesia wore off. The anesthesia wore off, which is around 4 a.m. the next day and we rolled you upstairs and you held Charlie and you didn't press feeder at the time, did you? Yeah, they let me try. That's you try, okay. That was, and that's kind of a theme

that will come up on another thing that was very important to me was well, one skin-to-skin contact with her early. Now, obviously I didn't get any of that within the first hour like you ideally want to. Right. And it was probably seven hours or so before I actually got up to see her.

But I really wanted that for her and I wanted her to be able to breastfeed as soon as possible because that's important too. Now, I'd missed a lot of the windows, but I, you know, went ahead and asked right away, is that a possibility or you asked maybe I don't know. One way or another, they let me try to breastfeed, which was good because at least we got that in early. So that day, we just sort of spent in the NICU. We were in a shared room where, I mean,

and Charlie was in what's called an isolette, which is those glass, well, I guess they're probably plastic. Boxes. Clear plastic boxes that regulate temperature and stuff like that. She had an IV in her hand. She had monitors on her lungs and her heart. She had, and she had a feeding tube at that point too, right? No, no, no, no, yeah.

No, they hadn't done that yet. Initially, they were still thinking, maybe this could just be a short stay. Now, that morning, it was when we found out otherwise. I tried to feed her, we were there for a few hours, and then we went back to... I had to keep going back to my room to check in periodically so the nurse could come like take my blood pressure. Because the city was still technically a patient. Yeah, so they make you come down sometimes and then they kept trying to give me medicine. So I had to take that sometimes.

Yeah. She did not take a lot. No. So we had gone back down to the room to do that and to actually eat something because you can't eat in the NICU. And when we came back, the plan had changed dramatically. Yes. In the two hours we were gone.

We come upstairs and first off, she's got the tube, right? At that point. Yeah. She's got a feeding tube down her nose, which, boy, if I had just barely started to adjust to the visual of seeing my daughter in a plastic box, like that did not help matters whatsoever. No, and I should say that like one of the things

patients have told me before, because I haven't had a lot of procedures done, is that a tube down your nose into your stomach is just about one of the most uncomfortable things that can ever happen to a person. So this is all that's going through my head and working it out again. Welcome to Earth baby, sorry about that.

As I'm looking at her. We, and we find out that,, you should probably describe this next part. We finally see a doctor. Yeah. And the problem is that although initially we were told that the X-ray looked like she just had that fluid that we talked about, that now they're not sure if maybe there was an area that was a pneumonia. It could be a pneumonia.

It could just be where she aspirated or inhaled a bunch of fluid and it was inflamed. One way or the other though, to be on the safe side, she was going to get antibiotics for the next seven days, no matter what. And that was it. Folks, woof, woof. That's what that felt like, woof, out. So not only was our baby not coming to the regular nursery that day,

like we had thought two hours ago, but now she was going to be in the NICU for a week, which meant that at some point I was going to be discharged. And at that moment, I didn't know how much access I was gonna have to her after after that outside of visiting hours. Yes. We were still able to the first night, we had been told that Sydney was going to be able to stay with Charlie and feed her throughout the night. Yeah, they were still letting me try to breastfeed that day.

So that day, even though my milk hadn't come in, I was coming up every two to three hours and trying to feed her. And she was, I mean, she, now part of it. I'll tell you, she's a champion breastfeeder. She is a great breastfeeder. She was really good at it.

Now here's the thing that makes that difficult. She was very with thargic. She was sleeping a lot. But she was also on an IV with glucose in it. And when you, when you're a baby and you don't have a great, you know, internal clock, one of the things that tells you the main thing really that tells you, hey, it's time to wake up and eat

is that you're hungry because your blood sugar drops. And that was not something that Charlie was experiencing. She was getting the glucose she needed without any help from mom. So that did make breastfeeding kind of a challenge because she didn't get hungry a lot because she was getting the glucose. So I was trying to wake her up to feed her

and she was not interested, which is rough because what eventually happened is they were just telling me to pump. And a lot of you may know if you've tried breastfeeding that it's not just the stimulation of like that a breast pump can supply that's important to get your milk to come in. It's all the, you know, the touchy-feely stuff. Right.

We actually did have some moments where Sydney was trying to pump him and I had a picture of Charlie on my phone back when we were in the room so she could look at her and try to visualize, uh, project having the baby there. They tell you to do that. They also tell you to have like a blanket or something that smells like your baby and to smell it while you're doing it. And I mean, there's science there.

You need those hormones that holding your baby supplies. Um, the, uh, so that, but we had been told that snow would be able to be up there. Um, we learned, uh, uh, uh learned that night at about 1 a.m. that because Sydney was still a patient, she wouldn't be able to stay in the, she wouldn't be able to sleep in the NICU room. Which, let me just clarify, at that point, by sleeping,

I meant that every three hours at that point was at two or three hours. Three. Every three hours at that point, by sleeping, I meant that every three hours at that point was it two or three hours? Three. Every three hours at that point. 11,258. In between feeding her, which feeding her was a, it was like an hour or a deal trying to get her to latch and then keep her latch and then she'd lose it and then rooting some more. And, you know, it was about an hour. So, the two hours that I wasn't feeding her, I wasn't allowed to sit in a recliner and doze. I had to go back downstairs. So the-

In my bed, and then Justin could push me in a wheelchair. So the hardest night I think was the night that we would, you know, say it was 11, we would push Sydney upstairs, she would spend an hour trying to breastfeed and then she said, would get back into the wheelchair and I would push Sydney back to the room, we would get settled, we would try to sleep for half hour. And I would pump, remember? Because they told me to pump after every feeding

to do everything I could to encourage my milk to come in. So then I would sit there and pump for 20 minutes. And then it would be about 45 minutes until we were supposed to start heading back up and we did that all night. That was probably the lowest point, I think, in terms of morale. I don't know, I think that the following morning

was even worse, because then the following morning everything changed again. We were told that I had worn her out by trying to breastfeed her. And that as a result, I wasn't allowed to the whole next day. And not only was I not allowed to breastfeed her, but we pretty much weren't allowed to hold her until very late that evening. They let me try some kangaroo care with her. But the whole next day we just had to sit and stare at her in her box. And I had to pump. And I think that was probably the lowest day for me.

Here's the thing about the the the Nick you. When we say stuff like we weren't allowed to I know that sounds weird, but Here's the thing that I wish I had understood before we went in I think When we when we went in we thought you know, well even if it's not what we want Then we can press against it. You know, nobody's gonna do anything without our consent. Once you enter into the NICU, we were genuinely afraid that at some point, like we would press too hard. And we are, we don't have a say at that point. I mean, we could, we don't have the final word.

Let's put it that way. No, there is no, the idea of consent doesn't really exist. It's not like with an adult, you know, if I'm in the hospital, if I had said, you know, forget this, I'm leaving against medical advice, they would have handed me papers, I would have signed them, and I could have done whatever I wanted, because I'm a grown-up. With kids, that's not true. If the doctor feels like there's something that needs to be done and the parent says no, the medical establishment wins. Right.

And I'm not saying that like it's a bad thing. There's a reason that rules in place. You know, there's a reason that we don't allow parents to say like, okay, I know my kid has this or that, but you're not allowed to treat him. I'm just going to take him home and let him die. I mean, obviously there are reasons we have these rules, but it can be really hard when you're a parent who wants to be involved in decision making, who's there begging, you know, please tell me what's going on. Call me if changes are being made. If I'm not

up here for some reason, if I'm downstairs, please let us know. We will be right up here. We want to be part of this process. They're not, I don't think they're used to that. So you are not included. Right. You are not told what's gonna happen ahead of time. Right. So it made leaving at any point, terrifying.

Terrifying. It was just, because you didn't know what the situation was gonna be. I mean, it was already hard because there's this little baby in a box that is yours and you have to leave it like that's that's already like miserable But to know that like things could just change overnight things could be different um and and you wouldn't be able to you wouldn't get the first heads up We were lucky at this point because by this third day we had actually been moved into a private room which

didn't have, so moms are allowed to stay in breastfeed overnight, but the rooms don't have beds per se. Or anything really that you can sleep on. There's literally a reclining chair that, well, you were there. It doesn't stay reclined. So the feet do, but the back doesn't. So you can push it back, but then you have to continue to push it back to keep it back.

So actually at one point, when I was finally allowed to sleep there, one of the nurses had to tie it to like the back of the couch with like a restraint to try to hold it back so I can sleep in it. But the bigger issue is that when you've had a C-section, your abdominal muscles can't be used for much without significant pain for a while. So to get up from a flat or reclining position is almost impossible. So I kept getting stuck, either in the recliner when it was tied back or there was a couch, horribly uncomfortable couch, and I tried to lay on it at one point and I literally had to roll off of it onto the floor onto my hands and knees to get out of it. So that was right out. What's hard is that that was,

I was forced to leave at 10 p.m. every night, and I can come back. That's really have no, I felt bad. I felt worse for you, because as much as it sucked to try to sleep there, I couldn't have been in any place else. And I hated that for you that you had to leave every night. Yeah. Sydney actually, she means that quite literally.

She said pretty early on that she carried her in and she was carrying her out and she wasn't leaving until the baby left. So there were five. I mean, Sydney was in there for a full week. There were five days though that where Sydney walked between the, our NICU room and a hallway, which led to a place where it was sort of a lounge, I guess, where parents could. Yeah, there was like a refrigerator and a coffee maker and they actually had a bathroom with a shower in it, which was kind of nice. So that's, that was Sydney Sydney's entire world for five days, with just walking between the lounge with the shower

in it and our NICU room. They made me wear this bracelet so that every time I signed in, it was like the color denoted that I was a parent, so they would know I was a parent coming back. And I finally, after the third day figured, I could probably cut it off because I hadn't signed in or out

and I had no intention of doing so until we were discharged. So those were like once we got past the point where, gradually what started to happen was try to leave the lesson less intervention. Yeah, once, I mean, they got her out of the isolate and they let me, after that day that I said, they made me stop breastfeeding, they actually let me start again the next day.

I'll tell you, if you are having trouble, if you have a baby and you're worried about your milk coming in, the best motivator in the world is someone looking at you and saying if your milk doesn't come in in the next 24 hours, your baby is going to have to have formula. I think that was probably what insured the next morning. My milk had definitely come in and I was allowed to breastfeed again. Thank God. Yeah, if you were, like there's a lot of that where, if you're a new parent, I think anybody who's gonna be a new parent has a lot of insecurity because they've never done it before.

Well imagine that, imagine if for your first week as a new parent, you were, there were definite goals that you needed to hit. Constantly, like the baby's temperature, there were weights of diapers and numbers of them that needed to be hit. There were rates of breathing that needed to be hit. There are, imagine so there are

like distinct goals that you have to reach. And also, there's a nurse seated directly outside your room with a little window into your room where they can watch your progress at all hours, at 24 hours a day. Like, and okay, now go and parent. And also your babies in a box and you have to change the diaper through two holes in the box. Enjoy parenting. It was really challenging because, and I think again, they're not used to having parents there 24-7 like I was. But I wanted to do anything that I was allowed to do for her. So things like changing her diaper, I wanted to be, you know, or just, and I mean, I wanted us to be doing it. I didn't, I didn't see any need for those kind of things for, you know, medical personnel to come in and perform those tasks.

And it was important to me. And, you know, they do that all day, every day. So they probably know a better way to do anything that I'm doing. And that's really difficult because as a parent, you should be allowed to not know the best way to change a diaper the first time. Right. As long as you're doing it, it doesn be allowed to not know the best way to change a diaper the first time. As long as you're doing it, it doesn't matter if you know the best way, but it's hard when somebody is coming in every time you do something for your baby

and critiquing you and telling you a better way. And I know the nights were rough when she was doing better and she would wake up and be fussy, like any baby would and nothing medical, just she was fussy. And would wake up and be fussy. Like, any baby would and nothing medical, just she was fussy. And I felt like there was a timer. If I couldn't get her calm down within the first two or three minutes, I knew somebody was gonna come in and take her from me

because they knew how to do it better than I did. And that's a really, I don't know, it made me feel, I lost a lot of confidence as a new mom as a result of that. We learned a couple of decent tricks too. Yeah. We learned a couple of decent tricks too. I think we learned a couple of good things, but overall. So the fifth night, I have to leave and go home so I go on a get in the elevator. And I press the ground floor button

and I start that long journey down to the ground floor. And after an end determined amount of time, I hear, gah! And the elevator stops. And I literally started, I just started laughing. Like, seriously, this is the week we're having, where the first time I'm ever in a stuck elevator,

it's in coming home from the NICU at 10 o'clock a night. Okay, great, I push all the buttons on the napkins, I turn it up the door and no dice. I push the emergency button and I hear, after about three minutes, I hear a woman come on, go, well where are you? I'm in the elevator. Did you try pressing the buttons? Yeah, I tried I did try pressing the buttons

No dies there, so then she says Well, I want somebody come get you out. No, ma'am. No, I'm gonna start a new life For myself and be king of the elevator. I'm going to live in this elevator now. No, I don't want any help. Yes, please. Okay, well, I'm going to, I'm going to call him who I don't know. I have no idea. I'm going to call him and if we get cut off, just press that button and it'll call me back. I wait five minutes. And I eventually she comes back on and says, well, he's on his way. And at this point, I have been broken. And I have to ask, like, do you mean like when you say he's on his way, is there a man in the building walking here, or is there a guy like in chill a coffee who's like driving 90 minutes to come face. No, no, no, he's in the building.

Three minutes passed and the door opens and I see that the exit to the floor above me is like a good six feet up and this guy says, well, partner, I don't know how we're gonna get ya there and I don't give him any choice to the matter and I just start scrambling up using all of my agility to put my foot up on the hand rest and basically make the force this portly security guard

into pulling me out, baby Jessica style. Like, please daddy, help me, help me daddy, I wanna go home. So I bust out of the elevator eventually. So that was the close, since there aren't TVs in the room, I was very thankful for this story because it was the closest we got to entertainment for them. That story got to see 24 hours, just telling it to different people. And yeah, there wasn't a lot going on.

To the point where Sydney and I would start, we would lie there and read each other one minute mysteries from this book of like one minute, like kind of thing like um like lateral thinking puzzle. Lateral thinking puzzles were like he saw the broken glass in the ground and his car was missing but he knew he wouldn't have trouble finding it and why and then you asked you have to answer no questions.

They figured out like well he was almost out of gas so the car would be close by like when are you ruined it for that. Not ruined that certain puzzle but if you want another one, let me know. I'll come up with it. Yeah. No, that story got us a lot of mileage. Although I will say it was, that's another thing after you've had, and if you've had a C-section, you know this or any abdominal surgery, I imagine, laughing is rough at first. Yeah, it's rough.

So, but it was worth it. And as you can imagine, you know, since we said this has a good ending, Charlie was getting better and better every day. The, you know, breastfeeding was going better and she was breathing better and they finally one thing at a time, we got rid of the IV, we got rid of the isolate, we, you know, she was just in a regular Basinette, and I have to say those last couple days when she was just chilling Basically, right being a newborn only in the NICU. Yeah, there's we're kind of I mean

I was so thankful she was okay But those were rough because all I could think was everything we're doing we could do at home except for the twice a day when she got a dose of antibiotic and at some point she had to They moved her IV to her scalp and that was really hard and then that wore off and we were there when they put her next IV in and that was... I think that was the hardest part was all the stuff that had to be done to her. And I know that it was done with the best of intentions, you know, in terms of helping her. And I know that she has forgotten it. But that was hard. Oh, we also, so the last day, we get to the last day of her stay, the last day of her antibiotics. We were told that there was a chance maybe

that she would need 10 days of antibiotics, which was like, that was probably the most brutal, like one of the most brutal blows. It's like every time you feel like you're getting a leg up, you just kind of get knocked back down. Because we've been counting the seconds until we could get out of there. Yeah. And she was doing great. I mean, that was the hard part. And for me, you know, my doctor brain was not functioning for the most of this.

And I don't want it to with her. I want to be her mom. I'm not her doctor. She's great doctor. A very good friend of mine. And she, I trust her completely to take care of her. But my doctor brain was screaming. She looks so good clinically.

She's doing great. She's doing everything she's supposed to do. Please let us go home. So we were on total pins and needles waiting for these results. But there was one last hurdle we had to do there because we had to watch two films about caring for our baby because we had been through the NICU. I don't think there's a, I guess NICU babies are more susceptible many of them to needing this kind of

treatment. They're at higher risk for certain things that make this. Well half of these. Okay so there was one thing that we had to do where we had to watch a video about infant CPR and then and then we had to perform infant CPR on this dummy baby. And I'm basically like performing infant CPR for a nurse in front of my newborn. And just telling myself like if this ever happens, there's no freaking way. No way on earth.

I'll just hand it to Sydney. Like there's no way I can do this. This was useful training, but like terrifying. It's terrifying. Like I'm already horrified, but what's going on. Now like, here's what to do. She starts dying. Like, okay, great. That's something I need to think about right now. Um, and then we had to watch a movie, which again, it and actually babies, not so much who had the issues that Charlie had, but babies who have more severe issues are at higher risk

for things like shaking baby syndrome. But there was something called the period of purple crime, which maybe we had to watch. And purple sum dumb acronym stands for something that has to do with crime. It's a 15 minute video that I could boil down for you. Sometimes babies go and cry, don't shake them. That's the whole video.

Instead, we get testimonials from people who did not shake their baby. They couldn't find someone to own up to that. But they could find people who were like, yeah, I let someone hold my baby and then they shook them. It was horrifying. It turns everybody into a strange, everybody who will ever hold my baby

is now a potential shaker. Did I have to? No, we had to talk to all of our family about that We didn't have to we did we were terrified we said it like You know don't like you know not shaker we said it jokingly but like if they had stared deep into their into our eyes They would have seen something that's like no, but really though don't shake the baby and there's a thing I had worries, obviously, it's a new mom, I had fears and concerns.

That was not on my list. That our friends and family, any one of them could be Jack the Shaker. I did not need that. I mean, now it's on my list. Now my list is so much longer. Oh boy. So the labs come back,

the labs that we were waiting on to see if she need more in a box, come back. She's great. Yeah, everything was fine. She was, she was fine other than newborns when they're doing well, don't like to be restricted to little Nicky rooms. They want to, they want to get out of there. Yeah, they want to bust out and see the world. They also want their mommy's and daddy's to hold them all the time. All the time. At least that's my experience with Charlie. Yeah. So she, at least that's my experience with Charlie. Yeah, so she, it was actually a really kind of weird moment because we got to a point where we got our breast milk that we had been storing up all frozen.

We got the back girl outfit that we wanted her to wear and then the, Cindy had to check matching bracelets, matched her bracelet with chucks to make sure that they were a match. We all had to agree that this was indeed my daughter. Um, and then they took the, um, the last thing was that they took the heart and lung monitors off. And I, we had been waiting for this for a long time. Um, oh, actually one thing before we get to that, uh,

she did have to get a hearing screen because that antibiotic that she went on could make, could, could, a, could damage her hearing. Could damage her hearing. Not something we were informed of before and they didn't do a hearing test before she had the antibiotic. So it would have been questionable where the, the source of that had come from had she actually had a hearing loss. It's a crazy thing too because the baby can't like raise her hand when she hears a beep. So you have to put brain scanning equipment on her to okay. Yeah, like pinged in pulses through brain anyway.

It was fine. It was fine. It was fine. The last thing they do is they remove the heart and lung monitors. And it was actually a really sort of weird experience because we've been so looking forward to it like oh finally give me our baby. But then, oh my God, you do not know how dependent you are on a TV telling you how fast and more importantly, that your baby is in fact breathing.

The practical upshute of this is that I still lay there at night after I've put her down for a good 20 30 minutes staring at her Watching her chest rise and fall just to ensure that it still is Which is probably I think a lot of parents could probably yeah, she's not co-sleeping by the way She's in a bassinet next to our bed. I didn't want anybody to think we were doing that Although there are some people who advocate that I'm'm sticking with, you know, the bassinet. She's the bassinet. She's in her bassinet and we watch her breathe all night.

Yeah. But she's doing great at it. So I want to talk about sort of like where what the action items are for people. And I'll talk from my perspective and then I like to hear your perspective because I know that, you know, it's a main the medical profession, you probably have a different out view than I do.

I wish that, and this is what I would tell any like perspective parents, you don't wanna think about being in the NICU. I understand that that is like hugely, hugely upsetting. But I saw several times, and I know we experienced it, parents who did not even consider the NICU didn't even think about the NICU until they were in there. And that is not the time where you wanna be

assessing a situation. I would very, very strongly encourage anybody who's gonna have a baby before you decide on your hospital and even afterwards, find out about the NICU at the hospital you're going to find out about the policies find out what you can and can't do. Maybe you won't need that information. God willing, you won't, but make yourself an informed consumer in terms of like what is going to be the procedure

if your baby does need to go to the NICU because it's a terrifying time and it's a really really bad time to start sort of making your piece with a scenario. And that is something that I would strongly recommend to people is find out about it because once you're in the situation you have zero control. The only time you have control is when you're deciding on where you're going to end up. And I think that it's also good to, if you are in that situation, and of course a lot of the people who end up having to utilize the NICU are people whose babies were born premature. And in that case, it's a very different scenario. And like I said, in many ways,

we were lucky. We were lucky that Charlie only had to spend a week there. If your baby has to spend, you know, months there, then it's a very different situation. You can't move into the NICU for months, obviously. You know, nobody can do that, and nobody should be expected to. But if you are in a situation, I think a little more similar to ours, or if your baby is spending a longer time, you can at least, you can assert that you're the mom and dad. It's okay to say that. Hey, what are you doing something that I can do? Can I do that thing? Can I be a part of this? I mean, because that was the thing I kept asking over and over again is I'm not saying, you know, I abandoned the medical care to the medical system, but I want to be a part of everything that isn't medical. Everything that's a mom or dad job, I want to be a part of,

and I don't know, and maybe I don't know if this is universal or if this was just our unique experience, I don't know that the medical professionals there are used to that. They certainly weren't prepared for me to ask for it, and if I didn't push it, they weren't going to offer it. I think that the, if I could go back and the reason I'm advocating, we're advocating this, the reason I wanted to do the episode is that I,

I think that we spent the first few days of this experience, seeing ourselves as people who should not be in the NICU. We, we, we, we saw ourselves as like, we, we couldn't process it, you know, and I, and I don't think that that was the scenario. That's where we ended up. But once you decide that you are in the medical establishment, once you're in the medical, you're in the system, you have to accept that. And I think that we spent a lot of time the first few days fighting against that. And I think that like we spend a lot of time the first few days fighting against that. And I think that we were a lot happier and things went a lot easier on us

once we accepted that like we had decided to be part of this system. And we should act, we have to act, we have to ask that because you don't have a Trump card, you know, and you can sit and feel angry and you know, jilted that you're not having the experience that you wanted, or you can educate yourself about, you know, where you are, and sort of integrate yourself with that process. Because we spent a lot of time sort of cursing

the darkness and fighting against it. And, and I think we would have been a lot happier if we had, we had accepted a little earlier and been a little more zen about it. And it's hard to, if you have been through this or if you're ever going to go through this I imagine you could relate to this. I still have a lot of guilt, which is irrational because we didn't do anything wrong. It's not like if your baby ends up in the nick you. It's because as a pregnant mom, you did something wrong necessarily.

I don't think I did. I don't think that my doctor did anything wrong. I don't think Justin, I don't think you did anything wrong. Thank you. It just happens. It's just, you know, it was bad luck and it happened, but it's hard not to hold yourself responsible because here you are, this new parent, you will do anything for your child, and right now they're going through crap that you don't want to happen to them and that you would hate if it was happening to you.

And I don't know, that was the hardest part for me is I felt really guilty. I think that's normal. I think that obviously it's not my fault and that's something I I'll work through but But I just I put that out there because you expect that if you ever hopefully you don't have a favor have to go through this We had said before when we decided to have a baby in a hospital We had we had decided that like the reason we were doing it was because it's so ironic in retrospect The reason we wanted to do it was because of the hospital had a great NICU. And we are...

That was our whole argument, because we had really considered a birthing center. We really liked that idea. And that was the birth experience I had wanted to have very much, so not a medicalized birth. Keep the medicine as far away. It's physiologic. It's not pathologic. You know, you've heard me say this a lot,

but then it ended up, I mean, it was good we were in a hospital, obviously. Right, I mean, that was, and so once we did actually have to need the NICU, then we were fighting against it the whole time. It's like, I don't know. I don't know if there's a lesson to be learned. I think we performed about as well as we could

given the circumstances, but. I just think that you've got to remember, and if you have had a couple kids before, maybe this would be easier. I don't know, because our experience was as new parents, but you are parents, and you do have a right to ask and to get involved and to be part of the decision making. And I think by the time I felt confident enough

to be pushing that, a lot of the decisions that had already been made. Right. I feel really thankful that despite that, one that of course, Chuck's doing okay. And two, that we were able to, you know, get breastfeeding established and that we got some time once we started pushing it,

I got some kangaroo care with her, Justin got some kangaroo care with her there in the hospital. So some of those early days, we did get a little bit of bonding and skin to skin and stuff that, you know, I had worried it would really be threatened by all the medical interventions. I think that, I mean, we were extremely lucky.

I mean, we were lucky that we were able to get a private room since we were there for a week. We were lucky that Chuck's doing great. We were lucky that we had a lot of really kind nurses that we interacted with that were really wonderful to us and to Chuck. And I was lucky, I will say, for the doctor that took care of us, our pregnancy, that I just can't say enough for picking somebody you trust

because he was a wonderful comfort during everything we were going through. And I don't regret any of that choice at all. No, so we were very lucky, but the thing that I learned and I hope that you can take away from this is that when there are unforeseen circumstances, the more you can do to be prepared for those, the less time you'll waste feeling bad for yourself and thinking how unjust everything is. And then sooner you can get back to,

because it's like Cindy said, you are still the parent no matter what the situation is and you can still act like it. And if I had been a little more educated about where we could end up, then I think we could have gotten back to that a little bit quicker. So it all worked out in the end, I think, I think everything.

Yeah, I mean. I think everything. Yeah, I mean, so we made it home seven days later. Yep. We're here. Chuck is doing great. She is gaining weight like a little monster. Yeah, a lot of weight. She was 9-11 by the way.

She, when she was born. That was her birth weight. She's back up now. She's probably her 10 pounds at this point. Yeah. So she's gaining weight like crazy. She's pooping like a machine. Like a poop machines. She eats all day now. Constantly. Yeah. She was on like a cool schedule for like a week. Now it's just feed me now. And then again,

and then I'll wake up in a half hour one eat again. I can tell right now she's nagging. Yeah. So anyway, that was our experience. And also our longest show. So sorry about that. But that was our experience. And we hope you learned something from it. I know that we learned a lot. A heckful lot.

And again, I know this was a lot of serious stuff and a lot of personal stuff. But one, we thought you'd want to hear the story of Charlie Gayle McAroy. And she came to be. Maybe she's listening to this sometime in the future. It's fun to think about. And if this wasn't your cup of tea, don't worry, as we promise, next week we'll be back

with gross, weird medical stuff like we usually provide. And you can laugh again. You can laugh again. Uh, uh, but until that time next Tuesday, uh, I remain Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone Listener Supported Albany and Culture, Artists Don't.

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