Arielle’s story

November, 2003. After a late night nursing, I stay awake, studying and marveling at Arielle’s face. Barely three days old, Arielle has just come home with us from the hospital, where she entered the world with a full head of dark hair.

My daughter. I repeat the unfamiliar words in my head as she snores softly besides me. After three years of sharing boyhood joys with my son Daniel, I now embrace this new addition to the family and beam, picturing the matching summer dresses (lavender and spaghetti-strapped, to be exact) she and I will wear some day.

But the moment I touch her forehead, I am alarmed. She has a fever, which swiftly goes back to normal. I run to the next room. Nearly hysterical, I yell at my husband, Wayne, who is sleeping with Daniel. I know something is terribly wrong.

We rush Arielle to the emergency room. By then, her temperature is below normal. The doctors suspect an infection, which could be fatal to a newborn. One needle after another is inserted into Arielle’s heel, back, hands. Multiple IV lines are hooked up to her body. Suffering also from jaundice, she begins to receive phototherapy treatment, in which she is placed under fluorescent-type lights, her eyes protected by patches.

As Wayne drives Daniel to school, I’m left alone with Arielle, who undergoes more tests. I stand still by her bed, awed. Her face is still wrinkled from delivery. There is baby fuzz on her back. “Arielle, you are the most beautiful creature on earth right now,” I whisper.

A nursing mother, I choose to stay with her at the hospital around the clock. It will be almost a week before the results of her blood culture come back. In the meantime, we are left in the dark as to the exact nature of her infection. Several doctors have made up a team for Arielle. I’m loaded with questions each time one of them stops by. One evening a lab technician enters the room and announces in his businesslike voice that he needs to draw blood again. Yet another needle is inserted into Arielle’s heel, which by now looks like a pincushion. My little girl screams. I turn back and shed tears.

I feel drained both physically and emotionally. In this overcrowded hospital, we share a room with three other families. I spend sleepless nights, squeezing myself into a chair-turned-into-bed in the corner while enduring a seemingly endless chorus of crying babies. One afternoon, I manage to take a catnap on a hard chair in the “New Mothers’ Room.” When I return to the room, Wayne announces, “Her heart rate dropped.”

I’m frozen. Unable to regulate her temperature, Arielle is placed in an isolette, a clear temperature-controlled box. I’m allowed to take her out only when I breastfeed her. When I do take her out, I have to be extremely careful not to pull out her IV lines or monitor lines. I sing to Arielle each time I put her to my breast: sometimes nursery rhymes, sometimes “doyo” (traditional Japanese songs from my own childhood). Once, a nurse sees me holding her after the nursing and tells me to put her back into the isolette. But, realizing how I savor these moments, she smiles faintly. “Okay, just a couple of more minutes,” she murmurs, closing the curtain which separates the small world of Arielle and me from the outside world.

A long-awaited phone call awakens me early Friday morning. The blood culture reveals, says the doctor, that Arielle has MRSA, an antibiotics-resistant staph infection. If we had waited even a few hours longer, the bacteria could have spread to her organs, causing serious defects, or even killing her. Fortunately, we caught the problem early, and the bacteria had remained solely in her blood stream when she was admitted. Learning this, I recall that night, when I laid down with Arielle, dreaming of our matching dresses. I remained alert (uncharacteristic of me late at night) even as a mother who had just given birth. It’s a little miracle of its own; without that alertness, I would have missed the momentary rise of Arielle’s body temperature.

In the hospital bathroom, I confront my own reflection in the full-length mirror. No trace of makeup. Bespectacled. (I have even forgotten where I left my contact lenses.) Sweatpants and flip-flops. I catch a glimpse of motherhood in the mirror. I no longer look like a crisp-suited lawyer with immaculately polished nails. But I don’t feel ashamed of the way I look now. The Ninth Amendment, Rule against Perpetuities—I don’t remember what they are, and could care less. I shrug and go back to the room where my little warrior continues to fight her first fight.

Arielle is slowly on her way to recovery. One evening, she is weaned out of the isolette. Wearing her pink “Born at Swedish” cap, she is placed on a bed, covered by a beautiful quilt handmade by a hospital volunteer and given to us as a gift. I feel triumphant as we leave the hospital shortly afterward. It doesn’t matter that the ordeal is far from over; she has yet to undergo treatment at home, taking antibiotics through her internal IV line several times a day, and to visit the hospital often for various exams. For now, I rejoice because Ari-chan (her nickname in Japanese) is healthier, stronger, chubbier. At home, I take a long hot shower and cuddle Arielle in my arms. She shows off her toothless grin in her Winnie-the-Pooh sleeper. Arielle, you are here. You are here with us.

Postscript: November 2005. At her one-year checkup, the doctor assured me that Arielle is a normal, healthy baby. “Ari-can!” Daniel exclaims as he comes home from preschool and runs to his sister. She is intently engaged in one of her favorite activities: chewing a straw. Daniel pats her on the head, and she squeals with joy. He loves to call her Cinderella, partly because her closet is filled with frilly dresses I bought for her. Arielle does have a lot of hair for her age, and I recently began to try different hair accessories on her, from barrettes to hairbands. Perhaps the day when we can try on our lavender dresses is nearer than it seems.