A life so small & in trouble

 ONE NIGHT I'LL NEVER FORGET....

A life so small, handed to me by a parent when I was a new ER nurse & working triage, I was outside the front door in the lobby & the parents came in and said the baby wasn't breathing, I took my stethoscope, quickly listened, heard nothing, I tried Not to look as Terrified as I felt inside as I grabbed the 9 day old baby & turned to go inside with the parents, took 3 steps to the counter where Dr B. was & laid the baby on counter & said I don't hear anything & he saw the fear in my face grabbed the baby went to a gurney & we called the code white & began CPR😳.

At the bedside we made the parents comfortable as possible, then the team got started, IV access couldn't be found so we had to do IO, which is in the bone, then we started IV fluids for blood pressure to stabilize the baby & we did save baby in the end & transfer him to a big hospital ICU somewhere else but it was so scary. Turns out the baby aspirated milk (meaning it went into his lungs)given by a dropper because this was what someone told mom to do if the baby wouldn't take the bottle 😥thank God mom knew something sounded wrong when baby was gurgling & to rushed to hospital. I'm so glad the baby survived, of course a part of me always wanted to know what happened after but thats the bad part of ER, you don't get to know the ending many times & you get use to it, but sometimes you end up hearing, mostly not.

My coworkers talked about the look on my face for a long time after that, cause thats how we cope with stuff, tease each other about how we handled the last tragedy, yeah I know sounds warped but its ER Nurse stuff. But there's those cases you never forget, you may not remember the name or all the details but it stays with you forever.