On Saturday night, one hour before I got the phone call that Scarlette could no longer nurse, I was at Babies R Us buying a Boppy. Because, you know, nursing was going so well. Today it sits unopened in the corner of her still unfinished nursery, where it will remain for the next ten days.
Ten days. Because that's how long my baby has to go without food. Because they think she might have NEC. I'm not going to tell you about NEC because I might fall apart at this keyboard typing it out. But if you google it then I think you and I will be the same, knees to the floor begging God to spare my child of that affliction.
We won't have a definite diagnosis until the morning. They came into her room today and stood over me as I rocked her, trying to soothe her relentless cries. It could just be a slow-moving blockage on the x-ray, they told me, but it looks like NEC. My tears fell on the downy head of my tiny daughter as I pressed my lips to her face and hoped they were wrong.
The preventative measures against NEC mean that she can't have any food for the next ten days. Which means that she has to go back on TPN. TPN, you know, that stuff that caused the liver damage that she was just now healing from? Right.
And the day didn't get any better from there as they told me that she has developed Stage Two ROP in her eyes.
Our homecoming no longer has a date on the calendar.
That's fine. Really. Disheartening and discouraging but fine. I don't need to circle a date in red. I just need to know it can exist, that there is a future for us with my daughter in it. I need things I can't have; answers and assurances and promises of a better life for her than this room full of alarms and wires and the soundtrack of a suction machine emptying the contents of her stomach.
And I really need them to tell me in the morning that she doesn't have NEC.
Look at that beautiful, beautiful tiny girl. I bow my head and I ask Him if He loves her, if He really loves her. I feel abandoned and yet still I feel His nearness and the whole of this faith I live I simply do not understand. I am a well run dry of prayers, unless Please is a prayer, a heart cry of "Look at her, look at her and please, please. Please."
Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears -Psalm 39:12
