The Unexpected: Mother’s Day in the CICU

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The Unexpected-3I woke up on my first Mother’s Day as a mom of two in an uncomfortable hospital recliner. Stuck in the Cardiac ICU at Phoenix Children’s Hospital for four days, it would be another four days until we were discharged and on our way home. We brought our youngest daughter home from the hospital as a newborn two weeks earlier. We didn’t expect she’d be back for a second stay at such a young age.

I will always recall every detail of the afternoon of her diagnosis. The two sisters played on the mat while staring in each other’s eyes. Our oldest was enamored with her new sister and we all relished this new addition to our family. My husband and I left our oldest with his mother and took our newborn to the pediatrician’s office for her 2-week-old weight check.

The pediatrician spent what seemed like hours listening to our daughter’s heartbeat, then told us to get to the hospital STAT. At the ER our daughter’s heart rate was 300 beats per minute, over IMG_0575twice the rate of the average newborn heart. We were handed a piece of paper with her diagnosis, Supraventricular Tachycardia (SVT), an arrhythmia caused by improperly functioning electrical activity of the heart that produces episodes of a rapid heart rate. While not fatal, kidney failure can occur if the heart doesn’t return to its normal rhythm. Don’t worry, we were told, we just need to give her this drug and her heart rate will go back down. Finding a vein on a 6-pound newborn whose heart was beating as fast as a hummingbird’s proved to be almost impossible. All I could do was hold our screaming baby and cry with her as she was poked literally everywhere, horrified when our daughter shrieked as the medication entered her body. We stared at the monitor. Nothing happened. The lines on the screen looked like a video game, not a human heartbeat.

An ambulance took us to the local children’s hospital’s Cardiac ICU. When I asked the EMT how old his youngest passenger was, he looked down at our two-week-old baby girl and said, “Her.”

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IMG_0578At the CICU my husband and I backed ourselves up against the wall, still in shock, as our daughter’s medical team worked quickly to stabilize her. The doctors asked us about our newborn’s recent behavior and determined she had been in SVT for at least a day. I felt like a complete failure. How could I have not known something was wrong? Why didn’t anyone tell me about this during my pregnancy ultrasounds or weekly non-stress tests? The answer was that they couldn’t. We learned that SVT episodes are triggered by a variety of things. Our daughter’s was not triggered until she was 2 weeks old. Don’t worry they told us once again, we’ll give her this drug and she’ll be fine. This drug always works.

Except it didn’t. After more failed attempts to stabilize her, the doctors were nearing the maximum amount of medication they could give our daughter. My husband kept a vigil in front of her heart monitor. Around 2:00 a.m., we ecstatically watched the screen finally slow back down to a normal heart rate. Unfortunately our daughter continued to have episodes of SVT for the next few days, which meant spending Mother’s Day in the CICU.

IMG_0610I was so grateful to be able to hold my youngest on Mother’s Day, despite the cords and IVs that weighed down her miniature body, yet I longed to spend the day with my oldest daughter, my mom, and my grandmothers. My post-pregnancy hormones didn’t do me any favors and I broke down after the hospital cafeteria staff member handed me a Mother’s Day carnation along with my lunch. My mom visited the hospital and I settled for a quick trip home where my oldest gave me a rubber bracelet IMG_0612to wear with my hospital band. Later that day when I was rocking my 2-week-old, IV’s and all, I knew that this was what being a mother was really all about. It’s about being there for your child no matter what. Putting your child first in her time of need. Trying to make things as normal for them as possible in a abnormal situation. The best way I could spend Mother’s Day that year was rocking and singing to my newborn in the hospital.

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Eventually our daughter’s SVT episodes were able to be controlled and then stopped completely. Her medication levels were reduced and we left the hospital 8 days after we arrived with a stethoscope and bottles of specially compounded heart medication. Mother’s Day had come and gone during our hospital stay, but that didn’t matter to me. My Mother’s Day gift was being able to come back home and be together as family once again. An even more meaningful gift is celebrating this year’s Mother’s Day at home with both daughters, and celebrating it with a bubbly, courageous 2-year-old who is no longer on heart medication and who, with luck, will not have any more episodes of SVT.

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1 COMMENT

  1. I love your perspective! Cheers to celebrating a Mother’s Day at home this year 🙂

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