The Whole Story

The Surprise

It was 8:45 AM on Thursday, December 19th. I was just getting ready to start work, when I heard Sara call down the hall, “Hey Xan, can you come here for a minute?” I walked back to our bedroom and she said “I think my water just broke.” Now, this was quite a surprise, since Sara’s due date was January 23rd. After a quick call to the OB, they confirmed “Yes, if you think your water broke, you need to go to the ER.” So now we had a decision to make. Sara and I had talked to several OB/GYNs at the beginning of this year, and had finally found this one that Sara was comfortable with. The only problem was that while their practice was in-network for our insurance, they delivered at UNC Rex Hospital, which was not in-network. No worries, we thought, Sara isn’t due until January. We get insurance through the marketplace, and when we re-up for 2025, we’ll make sure we pick a plan where UNC Rex is in-network. A flawless plan. Well, now Sara’s water has broken, and it’s not 2025 yet. So, instead of going where Sara’s doctors are, we hurriedly throw some clothes in our bag and head to WakeMed Cary, which is in-network.

Upon arrival at WakeMed, they confirm that Sara’s water has, indeed, broken. Due to some issues with high blood pressure and blood sugar, Sara is considered a high-risk pregnancy, and the doctor here seems a bit irritated that this high-risk patient who she hasn’t seen before has been dropped in her lap. This is compounded by the fact that it takes a long time to get Sara’s records from her OB. They move us to a delivery room and monitor Sara very closely throughout the morning and afternoon, and generally treat her like a pincushion with all of the shots she has to get and labs they have to run (none of this is a knock against the staff at WakeMed, who were awesome. We felt like we got great care throughout from all of the nurses and doctors). They give her some steroids to help the baby’s lung development and some blood pressure medication that also helps delay labor, hoping to hold off 36 hours to give enough time for the steroids to work. Then we wait. We wait through Thursday and Friday, and at midnight they start giving Sara a drug called Cytotec as the first step towards inducing labor. On Saturday, the 21st, we celebrated Sara’s birthday as best we could. We thought for a while that our baby boy might share her birthday, but things didn’t move that quickly. At 9:00, they gave Sara Pitocin to start inducing labor in earnest.

Throughout this process, I have been awed by the strength of my wife. As I said, she was constantly poked and prodded, and she consistently just rolled with it. At around 11:00 on Saturday night, the IV in Sara’s hand slipped, and her hand started swelling up terribly. When I later told my mom about this, she said “I’ve had that happen to me before. It was agony.” Well, I never would have known that from how well Sara took it, just calmly telling the nurse that it was hurting. Sara’s arms had a lot of swelling, so it was difficult to find a vein, and I had to just watch and wince as they tried 3 times to get a new IV in. She was a rock. The doctor asked if she had a high pain tolerance. Sara said “I guess, maybe” and I emphatically said “Yes, she does.” Around 3:30 AM on Sunday morning, Sara got her epidural shot. She was feeling good and kind of drowsy, and everything was going great, so at 4:00 I decided to try to get a little sleep before things really kicked off.

The Hardest Day of My Life

I woke up an hour later in a nightmare. There were four nurses in the room. One was kneeling on the bed with her arm reached up between Sara’s legs. As I tried to process what I was seeing, they wheeled her out of the room and said, “Dad, you have to stay here.” I didn’t even have time to say anything to her. All of a sudden, it’s just me in an empty room. Shock. Panic. Terror. At first, I’m paralyzed, then, I’m shaking, and sobbing, and crying out over and over again the only thing I can think, “God, please keep my wife and my little boy safe.” After what I think was 5 minutes, but could have been 5 years, a nurse comes in. She explains that they had to do an emergency C-section and put Sara under, and I can’t be in there. They’ll let me know when there is news. This is not comforting. I sit in the empty room and alternate between praying and having a panic attack. I fall to my knees. I cry out in a shaking voice “God, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do. Please keep them safe.” as snot and tears cover my face. Occasionally nurses come in and bring me water, ask if they can get me anything, tell me I should probably sit down. After about 25 minutes, a nurse comes in and tells me that the baby is out and breathing, and that Sara is fine. I’ll learn later that my son, Robert (Robby) Alexander Innes, was born at 5:21 AM on Sunday, December 22nd. At some point after that (I think around 5:40ish, but frankly my grasp on time this morning was tenuous), the delivering doctor and someone from the NICU came in. They explained that Robby’s heart rate had dropped, so the doctor reached up to check and felt the umbilical cord. This, I learn, is called a prolapsed cord, when the cord comes out before the baby, and it’s very dangerous because the cord gets pinched and cuts off blood and oxygen to the baby. The nurse jumped on the bed and reached in to hold Robby’s head off of the cord while they wheeled Sara to the OR. She probably saved Robby’s life. The doctor explains that Sara is okay and is being sewn up and cleaned up, and then she’ll be brought back into the room. The lady from the NICU explains in pretty broad terms that when this happens, the baby’s system is very startled. One of the ways they treat this is a treatment where they cool the baby down for several days to give their system time to adapt. In order to do this, they need to transfer him to WakeMed Raleigh. Once he’s ready, I’ll get a chance to see him, and they’ll wheel him in for Sara to see him before the transfer, then they’ll get us over there. This is, obviously, not ideal, but it sounds like everything is okay for the time being. I call some family to update them on the situation, and then I wait for Sara to be brought back in.

I wait…and I wait…and I wait some more. After a little while, people start coming to the room looking for Sara. There’s a guy with a CPAP who pokes his head in asking for “Mrs Innes”. I say “um, she’s not here.” He leaves and heads down the hall. Another guy shows up with an X-Ray machine. Finally, a NICU doctor shows up looking for her. Her location in their system is marked as this room, but she’s clearly not here. He looks confused, but comes in to explain in more detail what happened with Robby. Because of the cord prolapse, there was a time when blood and oxygen was cut off to his brain (they call this Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy or HIE). There’s no way for them to tell how severe this was at this point, they just know it happened for some amount of time. The treatment for this is Theraputic Hypothermia, where they cool the baby down for 72 hours to slow biological processes and lower inflammation and give the brain a chance to heal any injuries it may have sustained. They have them hooked up to an EEG during this time to watch for any seizure activity. After 72 hours, they’ll slowly warm them up over the course of 6-8 hours, then they’ll do an MRI to see if there’s any detectable injuries to the brain. He stressed that sometimes the MRI is clear, but you might still see some developmental delays, and sometimes the MRI does detect injuries, but because babies brains are so malleable, they can realign themselves and have no ill effects. Sometimes babies come out of this completely normal, and sometimes they have significant cognitive development issues, and there’s no real way to know at this point (I will later Google these things to try to understand, which is never a good idea, and read that at the more severe end, you’re looking at things like cerebral palsy and epilepsy). This sounds much scarier than the brief explanation I was given earlier, and I’m still wondering where Sara is. It’s been 2 hours since I saw her wheeled away. This doctor also seems confused about this, but since she isn’t here, he says “Come with me, I’ll take you back to see your son.” In a daze, I follow him back through a maze of corridors. We walk into the NICU area and he directs me to the sink to scrub in before I go back. I stare at the sink in confusion for probably a minute before I realize that the water is controlled by foot pedals. Finally, I get back to where they are getting the incubator ready for transit. And there he is. My son. My beautiful baby boy. My Robby. In the midst of the worse day of my life, I get 10 minutes to see this perfect little treasure who has entered my life in the most chaotic way. I reach out and stroke his full head of hair. I pray a blessing over him. I take some pictures and videos to show his mom. I weep and shake, full of joy tinged with terror. I’ve been kind of scared about becoming a dad (and don’t get me wrong, I’m still scared). I’ve never been a baby person. I didn’t know how I was going to react to having a kid. Turns out, there’s a special kind of magic to seeing your own kid, and I fell in love with him the second I saw him. As I wept openly in a room full of strangers, I asked the transport team to take good care of him as they wheeled him away.

Again in a daze, I made my way back to that empty delivery room. I stopped at the nurses station to ask if they knew where my wife was. They told me that someone would come to the room to update me as soon as they could. I return to that empty room, and I wait again. Eventually, the delivering doctor comes back in again. She explains that Sara had a violent reaction to the general anaesthesia. When they began to bring her out of it, she started screaming, trying to get up, and fighting the nurses. “Your wife is very strong,” she says, “It took 7 of us to hold her down.” Don’t I know it. They had to sedate her again, and when they did so, her O2 plummeted, so they had to intubate her. She’s okay, but she’s in the ICU until she can be stabilized, then they’ll slowly take her off the sedation to try to avoid that violent reaction again. I ask her 5 more times, “but she’s okay? You’re sure she’s okay?” The doctor is extremely kind as she assures me that Sara is fine, and tells me that I should probably sit down. I call my parents and Sara’s parents to tell them what is happening and ask them to come wait with me. Sara’s mom has come down with a cold, so she can’t come to the hospital (a fact which has been killing her this past week), but her dad and my parents come over to sit and wait with me. I also call Sara’s sister Amy. Amy just had a baby 3 weeks prior, so they’re up at all hours of the night and I’ve been updating her throughout. I update Amy on everything and tell her, as my voice breaks, “I got to see him, and he’s beautiful.” She’s crying, I’m sobbing. It’s a moment etched into my mind. 

The parents arrive. We wait. The dads go to get some breakfast for us. We wait. At about 10:00 AM, a nurse comes to tell us that I can come back to go see Sara. They don’t have an ICU room available for her yet, but they lead me to where her bed is set up on the floor below. They explain to me what they’re doing, what they’re trying to level out, how they’re keeping her sedated until they can ease her back to breathing on her own. Most of it washes over me as I look at her in the bed, connected to an array of tubes and wires. I will tell someone later, “They keep telling me she’s fine, and they’re medical professionals, I believe them. But I look at her with all those wires and stuff, and I go ‘how can she be fine?’” I pray over her. I tell her that our boy is okay, that she did a great job and is so strong, and that she has to wake up soon so that she can see him. Eventually, at about noon, Sara gets moved to a room in the ICU. Now, I have to make some decisions, and my mind is in no state to make decisions. My heart is torn in two. Sara is in Cary, in the ICU, and I desperately want to stay with her. Robby is in Raleigh, and I cannot just leave him there. After Sara is stable in her ICU room, I decide I need to go to see Robby. My mom, my sister (who has now arrived), and Sara’s dad stay with her, while my dad drives me out to WakeMed Raleigh (as I am currently in no condition to drive). We stop by my house so that I can shower and re-pack our bags for more days in the hospital, then we head on to Raleigh.

Upon arriving at WakeMed we walk through the visitor’s entrance, and there is no one at the front desk there. We walk up the stairs where there is a second front desk, with no one at that desk either. We’re not sure where to go, and Dad goes “should we wait for someone to come back?” I spot a sign that says “Main Hospital ->”, and I say let’s just go that way, we’ll figure it out. As we walk, I say “I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, it’s the only way I’m still standing. I’m a shark right now, if I stop, I sink.” We make our way down a couple of long hallways and up a slow elevator, and we find the NICU. We’re directed into a room off to the side, and there he is. Robby is laying on a cooling blanket hooked up to a machine that keeps Robby at a consistent cool temperature. He’s connected to so many wires and tubes, and the EEG cap covers all his adorable hair. The room is kept dark and noise kept down to keep him from being stimulated. But there he is, my boy. I can’t hold him, but I can touch him, I can see him, and he’s moving and crying, and he looks okay. I weep. I hug my dad. I look at his beautiful little face. At one point, I sink down into into a chair and just shake and weep, saying “He’s okay.” We speak to the nurse there, who is very kind, and explains some of what they’re doing and the things they’re watching out for. There’s a blessing from Numbers 6:24-26 that my parents used to sing over us when we were kids. I’ve been singing it over Sara and Robby since we knew she was pregnant. Now, I finally got the chance to sing it to him.

I eventually tore myself away from Robby, and we headed back to Cary. Mom let me know that the doctor they’d spoken to at the ICU said they’d likely try to wake Sara up tomorrow afternoon. They were also told that it might be 2-3 days before they’d be able to transfer her to WakeMed Raleigh, which was pretty devastating to hear. We stopped to grab a bit of dinner, then headed back to the ICU. Everyone else leaves, and I settle down on the fold down couch to spend the night with Sara. At 8:00, after the most emotionally taxing day of my life, and working on only 1 hour of sleep, my body gives out and I collapse onto the bed and fall asleep almost instantly. 

Better Days

By God’s grace, I sleep for 11 hours, and wake to some good news. The plan we had heard was they would wake Sara up on the afternoon of the 23rd, but they tell me that everything is looking good, and when the doctor comes for rounds at 10:00, they’ll know if they can start waking her up. I call Sara’s parents to let them know, but then had to immediately update that because at 8:30, the doctor came by, adjusted her meds to taper down the sedative, and said “we’ll give it 15-20 minutes, and if everything still looks good, we’ll extubate.” Sara’s dad rushes over, and we’re there as Sara starts to become more lucid. My sister had gotten a bunch of my pictures of Robby printed off, and had taped one of them up on the wall directly across from Sara. As Sara is waking up more and more, she lifts up her hand and points across to the picture. I’m tearing up as I say “Yeah, that’s Robby. That’s our son.” Once the tube is pulled and Sara is awake, I explain everything that happened, and what is going on with Robby. I was pretty nervous about how she would react to waking up and learning that she was in one hospital, and our son was in another, but, in another example of how remarkable my wife is, she took in the information and rolled with it. My parents had driven out to Raleigh to video call us from the NICU when Sara woke up, so that Sara could see Robby. They’d told us it might be a couple of days before Sara could get transferred to Raleigh, so we wanted to do all we could to let her see him, and I was not looking forward to more days of bouncing between hospitals. In another example of God’s grace and provision, however, they were able to get us transferred to Raleigh that afternoon. So at 5:30 on the 23rd, a day and a half after Robby’s birth, I wheeled her down the hall from our room to the NICU, and Sara finally got to meet Robby.

The next couple of days were filled with Sara recovering from surgery, figuring out pumping, family visiting, and going back and forth down that hall to the NICU to see our boy. His 72 hours of cooling ended on Christmas morning, when they started slowly warming him back up. So at 3:30 on Christmas afternoon, we got the best present we could have asked for, we got to hold our son for the first time. 

Where are we now

Sara was discharged from the hospital on Dec 27th, so we’re back in our own home. Sara has recovered very well from the C-section. She still has a little pain, and still gets tired quickly, but she’s doing remarkably well. As the doctor said, she’s a strong woman, my wife.

Robby is still in the NICU, but all of the news has been great up to this point. The EEG didn’t measure any seizure activity while he was doing the cooling treatment. The MRI revealed no detectable brain injuries. Despite being 5 weeks early, he was a healthy 7 lbs, 4 oz at birth. He’s acted every bit like a healthy baby boy. There’s no guarantee that we won’t see a developmental delay at some point which might need to be addressed with therapy, but by all appearances he’s had no ill effects from the HIE event at his birth. The only issue keeping him in the NICU at this point is learning how to feed from a bottle. This could take a little time or a long time, it’s hard to predict. He’s made some great progress so far, and we’re hopeful that it will be sooner rather than later. All things considered, we have been extraordinarily blessed in how he has recovered.

Still, for the time being, he’s in the NICU and we’re at home, and that is extremely hard. It feels like life is on pause, like we can’t really start living again until he’s home. Every day, sometimes multiple times a day, we trek out to East Raleigh to see our boy. We hold him, change him, feed him, and are amazed at this perfect little gift God has given us. Tuesday night, we stayed there till midnight to ring in the new year with him. It is precious time with this boy who has already stolen our hearts. But each time, we eventually have to leave him, and it breaks our hearts every time we do. 

We are immensely grateful to the family and friends who have supported us through an incredibly difficult time. We are thankful for the church community that has lifted us up in prayer. We have been so blessed by the doctors and nurses who have been both incredibly helpful and incredibly kind (and a particular thanks to nurse Marquita and Dr Tahtawi, who delivered Robby and saved his life). Even in the midst of difficult trial, we have felt the presence of God and seen his provision to hold us fast through the storm. We continue to covet your prayers in this time as we live in the in-between. Please pray that God would comfort our aching hearts when we have to be away from our son. Please pray that we’d be able to get some rest during this time to recover and be ready for when he comes home. And mostly, please pray that Robby would quickly learn to feed well enough that he can finally come home.