December 12, 2007
I walked into the doctor’s office with, as usual, both babies tied to the front of me. I had lost all of my pregnancy weight and was starting to go down from there. Worse, my pre-pregnancy bras fit. The three-day-a-week routine of two hours of traveling on the subway and into the Village for a six-hour day (including waiting time) and then back on the subway to make my way home was adding more than I could physically tolerate. Life had become a blur of traveling, nursing, feeding myself and Danny and trying to catch some sleep. The pediatrician examined the twins and said they had deficient weight gain. I knew I was not getting enough sleep or food to create enough milk for two babies and sometimes it seemed I was doing nothing but nursing. In my total exhaustion, I agreed to switch to baby formula. Looking back, if I’d been a little less tired or if the doctor was a little more knowledgeable, supplementing carefully would have worked, but he convinced me that continuing to nurse would starve them. I dragged home and started them both on the formula given to me by the pediatrician.
Lars’ temperament began to degrade by the next day, but I was still too exhausted to notice. Then both babies became colicky and cried continuously. By the third day the spit-up had turned to throw up after every bottle, so I switched to a home-made formula, which they both kept down.
Although our apartment had been comfortable, when the temperature hit
I put the twins into the same crib and put a blanket over the top of it to trap their warmth. MW wired space heaters to the outside hall lights, since, to our dismay, plugging the heaters into our inside outlets caused all of the circuit breakers to go. Using the space heaters gave me small warm areas to change diapers – anything but a sponge bath was out of the question. The twins were just over 13 pounds, a good, healthy size and I thought they could survive until we found a new, warm apartment.
Lars was the first to succumb. By the beginning of February he could keep nothing down, had diarrhea and started sweating to the point where he was slippery to the touch. I took him to a substitute pediatrician who was filling in for mine while on vacation. She said he had picked up a virus and to put him on Pedialyte® (a mix of water and electrolytes) to inhibit dehydration. Although he accepted it greedily, it would not stay down. That evening I found that his testicles had swollen to twice their size. Unable to reach a pediatrician I took him to the emergency room of the hospital across the street.
“Oh, Mommy,” the emergency room doctor said when she first saw Lars. “There is so much wrong with this baby!” Rather than follow my first impulse, which was to choke her, I directed her attention toward looking at him and to attempt a diagnosis, meanwhile wondering why she had chosen this field of work. She said, with an overly sympathetic look on her face, that he had a hernia and although painful it was not serious. I dressed Lars and fled.
The next day he was admitted into the hospital in the Village. The substitute pediatrician had him started on an IV to get fluids into him. He had dropped to eleven pounds and could not keep anything down. I had a strong suspicion it was some malfunction with his shunt. Although it was just a feeling, I could not shake it.
Watching an IV being inserted into my infant’s arm violated every maternal instinct and was agonizing to watch. Even worse: being ordered to hold his tiny arm still while he was being stabbed. Someone, somewhere, must come up with another, less barbaric solution.[1] I hovered near his crib and slept on a two chairs that I pulled up next to him.
The next morning I got up early, informed the nurses I was leaving, and rushed home to check on
They admitted her immediately, and put her into the same room as Lars. I took her to his crib, and as soon as she saw him she started breathing normally!
[1] In the interim, Mothers and Fathers, insist that your child receive EMLA® cream. It’s a topical anesthetic that numbs the pain of needles, apparently without side effects. We found out about this magical drug from a friend, when Lars was 14 years old. If you don’t insist on its use, most hospitals, nurses, doctors, etc. will not suggest it.
