Traumatic brain injury made us special needs parents

We were doing pretty well to start.We were high school sweethearts and married for 6 years before having children. We had 2 beautiful children, a nice middle class home, and family nearby. We decided to go for the 3rd child, I always wanted 4 like my mom. I loved being pregnant with each one. Not to say I didn't have aches, pains, and so on, but I loved how I felt and feeling the baby. I only had morning sickness with our 3rd and ironically he's the one that turned our world inside out. Now, the story I'm about to share, the facts, details, we didn't learn some of it until after the fact when we decided to find justice for our baby. I say that so you understand if we were aware and clearminded we would have somehow stopped it. You have no idea what is happening in the moment you fear losing your baby. I had no problems to speak of during pregnancy, he was perfect, but he was late. But so was his older brother by 10 days so I wasnt concerned. I was scheduled for induction around the 10th day. We hired a doula for the second baby and loved the experience so we hired her again for this one. We got to the hospital at 8am, feeling great and he was still perfect. The plan was for the doctor to break my water to start induction, but she didn't even know the plan until we told her, and yes that concerned us, but she IS the doctor. She was unsuccessful in breaking the water and had the nurse apply fundal pressure (I started learning all kinds of new terms with this baby). It means the nurse attempts to push on the baby to force him to move down the birth canal. We learned later his head never dropped and this is not normal standard of care (another new term). This was excruciating, I'm crying and my husband even asked if it should hurt that much. Mind you I knew pain, my second was completely natural, but this hurt and it didn't work. Doctor said she'll try again later and left the room. In doing the fundal pressure, the monitoring belts got moved around on my stomach, when the nurse got them back on, the baby's heart was so low she thought it was mine. She immediately had me roll on my left side and whispered, 'honey were going to have to do a c-section.' The nurse knew this within a few minutes of the procedure. The doctor was called back in and didn't believe his heart rate was in the 60's and decided to find his heart rate her way, instead of rushing us to c-section. She messed with the fetal monitoring belts, stethoscope, ultrasound, all the while his heart was in the 60's! She wasted 19 minutes of his life being arrogant and careless with our baby, our lives. By then it was such an emergency they had to knock me out so I'm totally unaware of whats happened, our doula was never called and my husband was by himself only having the doctors and nurses while they were working on me. He was without me or any support when he saw our son come out grey. To give you some shred of how this felt, saying that last sentence to this day puts a lump in my throat and a pit in my stomach. No matter how many times I've told this story it never gets easier. After the emergency c-section, they wake me up and I see my husband and a doctor I've never seen, say 'I'm sorry to tell you but your son was born suffered a traumatic brain injury and will likely never walk, talk, or eat.' I didn't even understand what he said or what it meant. I think I literally said 'what do you mean?' How? How is that even possible? He was perfect!

They took us to NICU to see him where we spent a month, we never went home. Our mom's brought our other 2 kids to see us now and then. They were 2 and 4 years old. Our son lived but I cannot explain the immeasureable grief we felt and the immense pain that came with being robbed of a healthy baby and watching him suffer on a daily basis. He started having seizures within a day. What a horrible thing to watch in your child. Then he started having abnormal tone (we didn't know what that was either). It's mind boggling the things your brain does that we never think about and take for granted. He was still intubated and had a feeding tube (ng tube/nasogastric) placed. That month in NICU they taught us how to hold a baby with high tone. It's difficult, he was stiff as a board and uncomfortable. They taught us how to feed him by learning to stick the ng tube down his nose to his stomach. We learned to draw up his meds of all of these life saving medications he was on. We met with priests, social workers, grief counselors, and so on. We never imagined we would have to learn how to care for our own baby. A day or two after the c-section they made me get up and walk so my husband and I walked the hall toward NICU. The delivery doctor was walking toward us and didn't even recognize us or say a word! We were dumbfounded, this woman who destroyed our lives 2 days earlier didn't know who we were. How many other mistakes has she made? I've learned since then this happens way more than you could imagine. This is just the beginning of this phase of our lives I will continue to share. Navigating the Journey of Grief and Loss Towards Healing