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06/29/2002 Entry: "Bye Bye, Baby"
Viviana Jean Thé was born via emergency c-section on Wednesday, June 19, 2002. She died on the operating table a week later -- Wednesday, June 26, 2002.
Because of all of her pre-birth troubles, we never really expected to meet her. So every day we had with her was a gift. She looked like Geoff. On good days, she'd hold onto your finger with her tiny hand -- the one without the IV in it. Her little feet were ticklish. On Saturday I told her "I love you", and she stretched out all of her limbs.
She had been doing poorly Tuesday morning. The doctors were worried about the gases in her blood -- they referred to her as increasingly acidotic. On Wednesday morning, Dr. Abubakar called -- the cyst in her right lung was expanding. It was cyclical; the cyst would trap oxygen and expand, causing the lung to lose usable tissue, causing them to have to increase the ventilation again. Finally, the ventilator was at its highest setting, so they had to do something to save her.
We rushed back to the hospital, where they were getting ready to take her to surgery. Dr. Chahine would be operating to remove the cystic tissue from her right lung. The dangers would begin when they tried to move her from her warming bed in the nursery -- she was so fragile, they were afraid that even gentle movement would endanger her. They did get her down to surgery without problems, but as soon as they turned her onto her left side, her blood oxygen count started to go down.
Dr. Chahine removed the lower lobe of her right lung and sewed her closed ... while they were operating, she started bleeding uncontrollably. Her blood seemed to have lost the ability to clot. He reopened her right side, in case the build-up of pressure inside her was causing the blood loss. He also opened her left side, in case there was air trapped inside. They eventually got the bleeding under control, and then her heart stopped.
They administered manual CPR to her heart, since the cut was already in her left side. They tried for 15 minutes to get her heart started again. Then they had to give up; longer than 15 minutes, and there would be irreparable damage to her organs and brain.
All of this was explained to us by Dr. Chahine, with Dr. Abubakar and Alan-the-Nurse in the room with us. They had all been crying before they came in. After they were done talking and had given us a chance to ask questions, they offered to bring her in so that we could say goodbye. So that's what happened next.
It was so hard. There aren't words to tell you how much it hurt to hold her -- and even though it hurt, I did not want them to take her away again. They had dressed her in a little white knitted hat and gown, and wrapped her in a knitted pink blanket. It was the first time I'd ever seen her without all the tubes and wires.
We came back home about an hour later. We wanted to be here with my mom, and sleep in our own bed. She's been here with us til today, when she finally had to go home. She's offered to come back and take care of the dogs so that we can escape the area for a long weekend, and we'll be taking her up on that.
Yesterday we had to go into DC to return the breast pump and stop in at the Medical Examiner's office to identify her. Because she died on the operating table, it's DC law that the hospital can't do its own post mortem examination -- in order to protect patients & their family, the exam has to be done by the medical examiner. And because of this, and because we plan to have her cremated (thus no exhumation would be possible, if doubt ever arose), someone had to go there to confirm that she really was Viviana Thé.
Although I went in with Geoff, I didn't see the picture. He did that part without me. Then we came home.
We will not be holding a memorial service. Please don't send flowers ... I know people only want to help, but they would just be a reminder of what we've lost.
I think this will be the last Baby Journal post.