As I lay in my room recovering from giving birth to Capri, our surrogate called to inform us that the medical team had decided to move the birth of the boys one week sooner. It was to happen in five days! Our pediatrician checked on Capri at the hospital and then again after we were discharged. She told us that she looked slightly jaundiced and took a blood test. The day before the boys’ birth, our doctor called and told us that Capri’s bilirubin levels were dangerously high and that she needed to be hospitalized right away. She recognized our unique situation and went the extra mile to have Capri admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the hospital where the boys were to be born. She told us to pack our bags while she made arrangements with the doctor. We needed to meet my parents at the hospital because she said that it was an emergency and that her levels would continue to rise on the drive down and she did not want us to get stuck in rush hour traffic.
We expected that the boys might be admitted to the NICU because they were triplets, but never did we imagine we would also be admitting our daughter. We anxiously packed our bags and made it to the hospital in good time. The doctors were very nice and Capri was admitted to a separate room of the NICU because she was born in a different hospital. She was considered to be ‘foreign’ with potential germs that could threaten the other NICU patients. Tears ran down my face as I watched her inside her little enclosure, called an isolette. She had a mask over her eyes and looked so helpless. We stayed until the end of visiting hours. Walking back to the car with an empty car seat felt incredibly lonely.
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