Angel of the Morning

She came in like a lion on the last day of February, 1981. Wrapped in white linen and plopped into my arms, her premature presence astonished me. So did the power of my love. I had not been ready for a child, too busy, my life had no room. Now it was she who protested, loud and red-faced, being removed from her warm, safe environment.

Traylor was with me. I watched the father cuddle his daughter, and we laughed about how loud she was and studied her face. Within moments, she was whisked away, over our protests, to be weighed, measured, and warmed.

The resident pediatrician on Saturday duty announced that she was the right size for eight months gestation. In spite of her low birth-weight, she would be fine. I dismissed all connections between low birth-weight and complications because inadequate prenatal care caused those problems and that didn’t apply to me.

As the nurse wheeled me from the birthing room on a stretcher, I was surprised by a radio playing at the nurses’ desk…

“Just call me angel of the morning, baby.

Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby.”

Tears spilled as the joy of the moment overwhelmed me. We had a daughter--an angel of the morning.

As soon as I was in my room, we asked the nurse to bring her for “rooming in.”

“That baby will be here soon enough,” she assured me, “and you’ll have her from then on!” We laughed.

I ate a tremendous breakfast, relishing the strong coffee which I hadn’t tasted in months and felt a tremendous sense of a job well done. We woke grandparents and phoned a few close friends. Another hour passed. "Necessary procedures take longer on weekends,” an aide explained. I completed birth announcements which I had tossed into my suitcase as we left home before daylight.

Traylor visited the nursery and came back with news. “’Renfro, Baby Girl’ is in an incubator wearing a little pink stocking cap,” he said. “A piece of tape on the incubator says, ‘shunting.’ What do you think that means?”

 

Again, we called my nurse who offered to call someone from the nursery.

We wanted the baby in our arms before we decided on her name, but we worked on ideas while we waited. We liked Vera, my grandmother’s name.

Mid-afternoon, a nurse explained that our pediatrician had been difficult to reach on a Saturday morning. He had to examine her before rooming-in. She explained that the baby was breathing faster than normal, which was not at all unusual for premature babies. I cringed at the term but did not absorb it, still high on adrenaline and full-strength joy.

We walked to the nursery and asked to have her placed close to the window. She looked like a gnome with her stocking cap and tiny disposable diaper. Lying on her tummy, with hands folded under her and knees pulled up, she was a petite mound of love. I could see teeny toes and one finger relaxed from the fist she had held more tightly before falling asleep. Her breathing was rapid, but not labored or difficult. I literally ached to hold her.

Back in my room, we decided to name her Vera Anne for both of our grandmothers and a sister. "But it sounds so formal and grown up," I said. "Let’s call her Annie.”

The resident pediatrician came finally to tell us that Annie had been moved to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). We could visit after nurses put her under an oxygen hood for Hyaline Membrane Disease. Her lungs were immature and unable to supply the the needed oxygen. “One of the Kennedy babies died of this disorder ten years ago,” she said, “but now it's rarely fatal due to better diagnosis and treatment.” She warned that the first three days would be critical, but assured us that Annie would be fine.

She was cared for around-the-clock by specialized nurses. I had no doubt that she would be fine. Annie wore a heart monitor and blood was drawn hourly to assess blood gases. Needles were rotated from right arm to left, right leg, left leg, scalp, heels.

“What a cruel welcome to this world,” I thought. “How can we make her want to live?”

She had reddish-brown hair and grey-blue eyes. Her nose had the same tilt as mine, but she looked most like her Dad. Her skin was soft and touchable. By now, I had mentally planned half of her life. I could see her at the age of eight, skipping rope with long strawberry-blonde braids flopping behind her. She would probably study music and enjoy working with her hands.

Oxygen tubes branched into both nostrils, and sometimes when I touched her, they would come out. We were unable to hold or rock her because of the equipment she depended on for survival. It was paradoxical, her needing our touch, our needing hers, but being unable to express our love freely for fear of harming her.

The plan was to gradually turn the oxygen down as her lungs developed until she was breathing on her own. When she maintained enough oxygen in the blood, the tubes could be removed. She would be in an incubator for a while longer then, but we could take her out to hold her, and soon get on with life.

Each time the blood oxygen report improved, they turned down the oxygen and we celebrated. Repeatedly, though, it would have to be turned up again. Up and down we went, with each hourly report. She could not maintain blood oxygen on her on.

Traylor and I were with her as much as we could be caressing her, tickling her toes. We brought her a stuffed Easter bunny and rubbed her gently with its soft fir; and the nurses placed her on lamb’s wool to comfort her.

Talented nurses were her link with life as day after day, their careful skill kept her fighting. And her primary nurse, Susan, became our link with hope. She sensed how inadequate we felt and reassured us with hugs and loving words.

On the second day, the nurse on duty suddenly called for help. Neonatal cardiologists ran in pushing carts and ultrasound equipment. Traylor and I watched the picture of her beating heart on the monitor. We literally held each other up as they spoke of emergency surgery. We were losing her.

My panic softened into surrealism and there seemed to be an unseen stirring in the room. Angels waited overhead to scoop her gently away and we would have to let her go.

Then, as suddenly as it all began, the cardiologists relaxed. Annie was responding to medication; they had a plan, a theory. Her heart was shunting blood the way it normally would before birth, but not after, preventing its proper flow, and this could be corrected. Finally, we could breathe again.

 

She had a good night. It seemed that the doctors had identified the problem and she improved steadily on the medication. She would pull through. It was simply too good to be true. We celebrated the three day mark with hope that knew no limits. Modern medicine would provide the time and appropriate equipment for the maturing of her lungs.

She had not yet been fed. The process of digestion would take energy away from the vital function of breathing which now had priority. It was not until the fifth day that they began to feed her, elementally, through a large intravenous tube. I was relieved that she would finally have nourishment, but this was also the day I was discharged. Leaving her there, driving home without her, seeing the season’s first daffodils, I felt sadly incomplete.

I stayed home only long enough to sleep, each day waking to the same sense of free-falling. We returned to NICU before each morning shift, scrubbing and covering our street clothes with sanitary gowns as the night nurses brought us up to the minute on her progress.

For two more weeks, moments of impending death interspersed with moments of triumph. For each small sign of improvement, a new complication arose. Her struggle became increasingly difficult, and as we celebrated making it through the weekend, she had become frail and weak.

On Monday, when an intern stuck her arm to draw blood, the artery ruptured and she lost the use of her right arm. “If she lives, the arm will have to be amputated.” They tried to comfort us, explaining how fragile she had become, but when the neonatologists made rounds that day, they kindly and gently informed us that hope had run out. There was nothing more they could do for her.

The social worker came to comfort us, saying that we would have to accept Annie’s death, and soon we would see that life goes on. My anger rushed at the nameless woman whose job it was to summarily dismiss another case. Annie had not yet died, and maybe she wouldn’t.

We mourned together that night, holding each other before a log fire. We could help her learn to manage with one arm, if Annie would just live, a promise and a prayer. Her room of newly painted furniture had never been so empty. Kneeling and looking out into the spring garden through her open window, I bargained with God.

Three of her grandparents were able to visit and tell her they loved her. Finally, for the last three days, we were allowed to hold her and rock her, with the oxygen tube held over her nose.

The chaplain found Traylor rocking her one afternoon, and he noticed the father’s cradled arms and the devotion in his eyes. “That’s the nearest thing to an angel I’ve ever seen,” he said.

 

On the first day of spring, Annie died, going out like a lamb. I believe she knew how much we loved her.

 

An autopsy showed that she had a rare heart defect, endocardial fibroelastosis, a thickening of the ventricle wall, but doctors couldn’t explain why. It may have been genetic and the reason for the premature birth. Or it may have resulted from the high concentrations of pure oxygen forced into her lungs.

Susan packed her few possessions and Traylor picked them up. Sorting through them, we found a magical, tender letter written in a child’s handwriting, “to Mom and Dad…from Annie.” At the time we didn’t know that Susan had written it for us; we could only weep.

Traylor finished a cross-stitch sampler, inscribing,

  

To Celebrate Annie

February 28, 1981

We had been to the Mountaintop and shared the view: Life itself, the wonder of it. And because that glimpse was ours for the moment, our hearts opened to new possibilities. Had she come to make room in our hearts?

As we buried Annie near a cedar tree in spring, new life budded all around us. Rain fell with our tears as the muddy earth became her womb. Her life was like the green promise of spring. We love her still, but she was never really ours. She was an angel of the morning.