I've been thinking a lot about "What Ifs" lately, and inspite of people advising me to stop doing that, they still carry some pretty powerful weight.
What if Dave hadn't been here?
What if I hadn't moved the baby monitor to TinyE's room?
What if I hadn't turned it on at that exact moment?
What if we'd been in the basement watching a loud movie and never heard her at all?
What if I'd been the only one here, found her, and what if I couldn't have cleared her airway?
What if Dave couldn't have cleared her airway?
What would the next morning have been like if we hadn't heard her at all?
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These images will never leave me.
The sounds of the gurgling over the monitor.
Her ashen face, blue around the mouth, vomit on her face and the mattress, her head lolling forward as Dave lifted her out of her crib.
Dave holding TinyE over his arm, shaking her and yelling her name over and over, and saying to me, "She's not breathing".
Running to the phone to call 911, wild with the fear that she wouldn't start breathing.
Coming back into the room and hearing Dave say, "She's breathing", but seeing her vacant stare and hearing her weak whimpers.
Giving the paramedics her name and age as we all stood in the master bedroom, TinyE lying on her side in our big bed and Dave with his hand on her shoulder.
Rushing to put BabyS in her carseat so we could follow the ambulance to the hospital.
Seeing someone cleaning the empty ambulance in the emergency bay and thinking had she died.
Watching her eyes in the emergency center and trying to get her to look at me instead of past me, prove she wasn't blind, prove she wasn't brain damaged.
Thinking that the pictures and movies we took at the zoo that day might have been the last ones we ever had of her.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
After an exciting day at the zoo, TinyE came down with a fever of 102. At 7:00 I gave her some Tylenol but her fever was still 103 when I put her to bed at 8:00. I was planning to check her in another hour to make sure the fever was going down. I even told her, "Time to close your eyes and go to sleep, but Momma will come back later and make sure you're ok."
Before I did that, I turned on the monitor at 9:00 to see if she was still sleeping.
We think those first sounds we heard – the gurgling and rasping - were probably the seizure, and when Dave got to her it was just finishing. She actually gave him a good bite on the fingers when he reached in to clear her mouth.
When they got her to the emergency room, TinyE's temp was 105.7.
With some more Tylenol and a lot of cool washcloths rubbed on her back, arms and head, it came down to 100 in a few hours.
Chest x-rays and urinalysis showed no major infections, "just a febrile seiure", we were told.
They told us that it's normal for kids to not breathe during seizures.. that when she regained consciousness she would have probably coughed and cleared her airway on her own.
But really, that's not good enough for me. Especially since they also told us seizures could last 15 – 30 minutes. Seems to me life wouldn't be compatible with not breathing for that long.
I've been thinking a lot about the What Ifs these past 48 hours. And I've heard that the What Ifs can drive you mad if you let them. It's a valid point, like "What if our house burned down today? What if that driver on the other side of the road plowed into me?" etc etc. You can't spend your life thinking about the What Ifs, they say.
Except this What If passed by us pretty close – so close that I won't ever forget the smell or the sounds or the terror of it.
We've been keeping her temperature under 100 with regular doses of Tylenol and Ibuprofren, and today TinyE had her first substantial meal since Friday afternoon. There's still a lot of "Mommy-up!" and cuddling that needs to be fulfilled, and we're taking turns sleeping in her room with her. But the thing is, she's here and she's ok.
What if we never went through this again?
That would be more than fine with me.
