Early Concerns and the NICU

After Elin was born, I distinctly remember a specific moment which I will never forget. She was set down on the weigh station and her APGAR testing was being done. I remember looking over at her little hands raised in the air and thinking...'That is not right'. What I noticed was she had an unusual amount of fingers on each hand and it was so obvious to me that something wasn't right. Her APGAR scores were 8 and 9 respectively. I remember everyone in the room (doctor's, nurses, etc.) were somewhat tense looking at her and hearing her weak little cry. I remember being fearful because they all seemed so concerned. In spite of their obvious internal monologue, they assured us she looked great and that babies were born with extra digits all the time. They told us not to be worried, bundled her up and handed her over. That was that. We were ushered to recovery and our little baby was ours to keep...for a few hours.

I remember feeling very overwhelmed and uncertain about what had transpired following Elin's birth. I felt like something was off and yet here we were in recovery and all was as it should be...right? The day went on as you would expect. Family came to visit, Elin slept a lot, and I realized I didn't really have time to feed her or practice that whole lovely process enough. Finally around 4pm or so the family left and I had an opportunity to adjust to feeding, the baby, etc. However, Elin was just so sleepy. She didn't seem interested in eating. Finally around 6pm, the pediatrician came to take Elin to the nursery to do his evaluation. He returned to us and informed us that she would be needing to go to the NICU. She had a very low blood sugar and it wasn't improving. They were bottle feeding her with formula in the nursery in an attempt to get her blood sugar under control, but they couldn't. He was also concerned about some of her little "abnormalities". What abnormalities? Well the extra digits being the most obvious, but she also had a sacral dimple, a weak cry, some birthmark type patches of red at various points on her body/head/face that he felt all needed a little more investigation. We begged to keep her but he said no and we thank him for that decision to this day. Off to the NICU she went...and the mysteries begin to unravel.