Coming in 3's....

The hands were pale white, gradually getting pinker the further up the arm. As I watched for an hour, the lips, from the outside in, turned from a plump pink and a ghastly gray. I lifted the lifeless curly-haired boy onto the scale. Seven pounds eleven ounces. Five days short of his original birthday. I rolled him to slide the yellow and green Winnie the Pooh snap up shirt onto his ashen body, placed a diaper over his bottom, pulled up the striped pants, and placed the too big hat on his head, I watched the nurse on his other side empty all of tears under her surgical mass. I rolled his feet in ink and stamped them, the usual practice I was told. Tears did not come. It was a moment when all the emotions you have should elicit tears but the ducts are dry. I was there.

She, the mom, said she had not felt the baby move in a few hours. Medical student, nurse, two residents, and one attending later the mother was told her third child, a son, was not "viable". Her baby was dead and was before she came to the hospital. Ten hours later, I was standing in the operating room waiting listening to the silence of beeping machines and laying a lifeless, beautiful boy onto a scale and carefully dressing him. They say it comes in threes. Deaths, births, life events. Well, I pray, sincerely and more than anything else for this week especially, that no other mother, no other father, family, doctor....no one has to hold a baby while staring so hard, begging the chest to rise and fall in a breath, feeling the disappointment when the small breastbone does not move and the pinkness turns blue-gray. So, please, if anything, do not let this come in 3s, at least for mothers.

And the enjoyment of my evening, dinner and watching Hopkins and Wipeout with my new friend, Paige, and JT, is overshadowed by the silent sorrow I witnessed today. How can you move on? I have done CPR on adults and had them die under my palms, but secondary, more times than not due to damage brought on by their own doing. But this perfect baby, this little guy did not have a fighting chance. So despite the fun, I think it is hard to erase what I saw, what I felt. I am sorry that the last two posts have been so sad, but at the same time, isn't this what my blog is supposed to be....my life in medical school, whether good or bad.