LABOUR DAY!

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined Maya’s birth to go down the way it did. If you’ve got like 5 minutes, sit down in a comfortable chair, relax and let me explain how our Miracle maya entered this world.

T- 12:30pm
On October 13th, Nicole had a routine checkup with her Obstetrician at Mount Sinai scheduled for 11am, about a week and half out from her initial due date of October 23rd. While at her appointment, she mentioned to the O.B that she had some strange leaking — something she had also mentioned in her previous checkup but the O.B didn’t think much about it last time. Dr. Shapiro then checked the baby and her heart rate was normal, about 120bpm. Out of precaution, Dr. Shapiro sent Nicole to triage to get checked out and to see if her water broke or not. Off to Triage we go! Back at home, David is working away like his usual workaholic self when he gets a call from Nicole from the hospital.

Nicole – “Babe, I’m still at the hospital but everything looks good. I’m just gonna go and get checked out in Triage but will call you when I know more.”
David – “Cool. Let me know.”

T- 1:32pm
In triage, the nurse checked Nicole for dilation and it wasn’t dilated at the moment. The nurse said that it doesn’t look like there’s any issues, no amniotic fluid or anything, but ended up monitoring the babies heart rate at it was it’s typical 120bpm self. The nurse monitored everything for about 20 minutes, and everything was fine and dandy. They then ordered an a test and ultrasound to see if everything is going okay with the placenta and fluids and a lot of jibberish I don’t quite understand, but it still seemed like everything was A-okay. At about 1:32pm, Nicole calls me and says:

Nicole – “Babe, everything looks fine in Triage and I should be home soon. They’re just doing a couple more tests, so I’m just waiting a bit longer.”
David – “Okay, great. But we realllyyyy have to pack our overnight bag for when it actually happens.”
Nicole – “You’re right, we’ll do it when I get home.”
David – “K cool, see you soon.”

Dr. Brown came in and performed the ultrasound and again, everything seemed to look fine. At the very last moment, they decided to triple-check the babies heart rate once more, and that’s when they noticed that it dropped to about 50bpm. Hmm… okay, not a problem. So they wait another couple of minutes for the heart rate to jump back up to its usual 120bpm but realize something is off… The baby’s heart rate wasn’t coming back up. Apparently, a newborns heart rate will fluctuate and sometimes get fairly low, but it will always come up back on it’s own. Newborns typically have a high heart rate, so a sustained low heart rate is definitely cause for concern.

T- 2:00pm
By this point, Dr. Brown calls in another high-risk O.B for support and to assess the situation. (senior doctor – can’t remember his name) Support asks Nicole to turn onto her side to see if a position change would help bring that baby’s heart rate back up. Nope, not working… the baby’s heart rate dropped even further. But how? Why? What was causing this to happen? At this point, support turns to Nicole and says, “Nicole, it’s time to do an emergency c-section. Nicole is then rushed into the E.R from Triage, which was thankfully just steps down the hall from Triage.

Side note – there was a lovely German store owner that we would pass by and talk to daily while at the hospital that sits in between Triage and the E.R. If you’re ever coincidentally recovering from labour before your discharge at Mt Sinai, please go and talk to her! She offered us a lot of support and has the sweetest heart, especially for someone you’ve never met before.

Okay, back to the story… While Nicole is being rushed into the E.R on a stretcher and a team of high-risk O.B’s and the likes assemble their team, Dr. Shapiro (her O.B who she had her appointment with earlier that day) turns to Nicole and says, “I just checked you… Is everything okay!?” Clearly not, Mrs. Shapiro! She quickly drops whatever she had planned in that moment and turns to the emergency C-section a la Nicole Basacco.

Can you imagine thinking you’re going into a regular and routine checkup and by the end of it, being told you HAVE to get an emergency C-section IMMEDIATELY? Nicole was shocked more than anything else. With nurses and doctors preparing her for the emergency C-section, they literally only had minutes to operate and save the baby (and Nicole) in the process. Nicole describes this moment to be the most difficult part of the whole day. It was absolute chaos to say the least, but we credit Mt.Sinai 100% because they knew that time was of the essence and every second matters when you’re dealing with an emergency situation where a baby is not breathing inside of you.

Once everything was set up in E.R and she was prepped for the emergency c-section, the doctors checked the baby’s heart rate one more time and by this point, it went down even lower. It’s game time. Nicole is then given general anesthesia and is then out like a light switch. Nicole remembers trying to be calmed down by the team of doctors; again, I can’t imagine the trauma and shock that one would go through in a moment like this.

T- 2:13pm
Okay… now what happens? Well, what happened in the E.R room is for doctors and doctors only, but we do know that Maya was out in about 3 minutes. She came out “flat” by the doctors terms and was white, lifeless and not breathing. Maya needed to be resuscitated immediately and was then brought back to life. She was given breathing tubes/oxygen for about an hour and slowly responded to treatment, bringing her heart rate back up to a normal rate over time. The doctor told us that Maya absolutely hated the breathing tubes in her nose once she began to regain consciousness. She was fighting to try and take them off… she’s a fighter I tell ya’!

T- 2:29pm
While David was at home working away like a madman, Dr Shaprio called David at 2:29pm and said, “Hi David… I’m just calling to let you know that Nicole went in for an emergency C-section and baby is out and on tubes right now… But congrats!”

“What the fuck? I just talked to her and she said she was coming home!?”

David, on the phone with Dr. Shapiro, hearing the news of Nicole’s emergency c-section

Then, in a rush, David then quickly tried to put together the most random overnight bag one has ever seen. Should I bring her underwear? Socks? What clothes does she want? I don’t know what even fits her anymore he says out loud, to himself, in a panic, as he tries to get everything together. David then calls his mom (don’t they always have the answers for everything) and rambles some nonsense to her about what he should bring and clearly upset with the whole situation. David’s mom says, “Don’t worry about the bag, just go to the hospital! All of that stuff doesn’t matter you can get it after.”

Nooooo! But Nicole didn’t want a C-section! Ohh man!

David, on the phone with his mom right after being told of the situation.

David then quickly calls an Uber and rushes into the car. About 10 minutes in, he realizes that his mom won’t be able to get into the house to sleep over and watch Nathaniel that night after she picks him up from daycare. Back to the house we go! David says to the Uber drive, “Sir, can you drive me back to the house? My wife is in labour and I need to drop a house key off back at the home.”

T- 2:58pm
On the way to the hospital in the Uber, David then gets some random calls from a private number asking him to confirm his wife’s identify. What the fuck!? Did she die? David confirms her name and date of birth, and the man on the phone hangs up. By this point, he starts to have some sort of a panic attack and the Uber driver slowly opens the windows without saying a word. I cannot tell you how still the world becomes when something like this happens. The only thing that mattered to me was that Nicole and baby were both safe. Money, wealth, all the shit you own or desire to have for materialistic things don’t mean a damn thing. All that matters is your health and the health of your family. I’ve had my share of traumatic moments in my past, but this was different because of the circumstances. Watching your father die in front of you at 11 is no small feat, but I was still too young at the point to really understand the impacts of what that day would have brought to my life.

T- 3:23pm
David gets a call from Nicole and she says,
Nicole – “Babe… I’m okay. I had the baby… I’m fine, baby is born but I don’t know what happened.”
David – “I’m so glad you’re okay… I’ll be there in about 10 minutes.”

So there I go, rushing my way into Mt. Sinai in the middle of a pandemic while my wife just went through an emergency C-section, my son in daycare and me not knowing whether or not baby Maya will make it. Eventually I make it into the E.R (after wearing a mask and sanitizing my hands of course lol) and am so pleased to see Nicole. I hugged her with all of my soul and we then listened to the rounds of doctors that came into the room to tell us how sorry they are to have put Nicole through that and how they’ve never seen anything like this in their lives before. The older high risk doctor from Triage (gentleman whom I can’t remember the name of) said,

In my h35 years of doing this, I’ve never seen anything like this. If I were you both, I would highly consider playing the lottery because this is an extremely rare case where you were at the right place, at the right time, with the right people.

Whatever happened, happened right in front of their eyes as Nicole was in Triage and the high risk doctor and brown doctor were looking at her because the baby’s heart rate was not going back up. We were told that the PH level of the umbilical cord was around 6.9. Apparently it’s associated with the amount of stress and trauma a baby is under during delivery. The normal rate is between 7.18-7.38 supposedly and she was considered low. One of the doctors told us they she’s ‘borderline’ in terms of whether or not to send her for cooling. There was also an issue of where the umbilical cord connects to the placenta. Apparently, it was off-centred to one side and not directly in the middle. Normally it’s in the middle. There was also concern that oxygen was able to go from Nicole to the baby, but there was an issue with oxygen going out from the baby to the placenta. What does this mean? Not quite sure.

T- 8:45pm
Eventually, she was moved to the NICU where we eventually saw her at 8:30pm that night while she began her ‘cooling’ process. While in cooling, Maya was kept at a temperature of around 32c with probes on her, CFM on her head, tube in her esophagus and in her rectum and the whole time she is assessed, monitored, blood work, ultrasounds, MRI, and cooled to prevent any damage to her brain during the first 72 hours of her life which are the most important.

You aren’t allowed to hold her and need to try and limit the interaction between you and her because she needs to recover. The hardest thing about all of this was not being able to hold your new baby for 4 days after she was born, watching her twitch and shake due to going through a rough delivery herself, being cold and being probed with so many devices. I had a hard time adjusting because I kept finding myself going back to retrace what exactly had just happened, and how long exactly Maya was without oxygen during birth. It wasn’t exactly reassuring in NICU while Maya was recovering.

Labour day and beyond
Maya was kept in the NICU for about a week. The first 3 days were cooling, while the next few were spent doing extensive testing, MRI’s, ultrasounds, bloodwork and the likes. Maya made a full recovery and we were able to take her home, with no known issues from the delivery. She was able to feed on breast milk of her own after being fed IV for about 5 days.