Divine Secrets of the Yo-Yo Sisterhood | Feature | East Bay Express 12/28/09 3:56 PM

East Bay Express

Divine Secrets of the Yo-Yo Sisterhood
One woman's journey through motherhood, volunteerism, and life with the
nurses in neonatal intensive care.
By Laura Novak

As an exotic Mediterranean warmth envelops Oakland, I drive from my home

in the hills to the hospital downtown consumed by one thought. I am
determined to put Jimmy's sweet baby feet in the grass before he dies. His
nurse in the intensive care nursery tapes two feeding pumps to the bottom of
the stroller as I strap him into place. It is impossible to roll past staff or
visiting parents in the hallways without them stopping to coo at this
irresistible little boy.

In the courtyard of the historically preserved buildings of Children's Hospital

Oakland, I wheel Jimmy down the ramp toward the oval of grass. On our
way, I pull several brilliant royal-purple petals from a Tibouchina tree.
Jimmy has spent little of his short hospitalized life outdoors, and the sunlight
is brutal on his eyes. He shakes his head from side to side. With one hand, I
shield his face and, with the other, drag the stroller up the curb and onto the
grass. I spread out the blue plastic blankets, cover them with extra cloth
nursery ones, and lift Jimmy as far as the plastic tubing connected to his
chubby body will stretch. I form a V with my legs to hold this dear baby, who
reminds me so much of my own son. I toss my ID badge over my shoulder so
the metal clamp won't dig into his head.

A delightful look of surprise flushes Jimmy's face as his toes touch the dewy
blades of grass for the first time. He rhythmically flaps his arms to the sides
before I gently bring them together and stroke his palms with the velvet
flower petals. Before wheeling him back upstairs, I gather one fresh leaf and
one crackling dry one from the giant magnolia. I want him to feel as many
textures as I can gather during our brief time outdoors.

A few months later, Jimmy dies on the very same day my son, Max, enters
kindergarten. Jimmy was seven months old. Max is now six years old. A
lifetime apart, they lived for months in the same corner spot in the intensive
care nursery.

It is a Tuesday morning at the beginning of my shift, and I am standing at

one of the four stainless-steel sinks in the scrub room just off the central
cross-shaped hallway that comprises the intensive care nursery. A very pretty
mom, whom I recognize from Room C, rolls up her sleeves and reaches for a
plastic-wrapped scrub brush. Simultaneously we peel back the packaging,
push the knee valves on the water panel, pump the black pedal as the soap
pours from a spigot onto our sponges, and lather up to our elbows in foamy
antibacterial soap. Lynnette Gomez has cascading blonde hair and perfectly
applied makeup. She glances sideways at me a few times, taking in my
turquoise volunteer T-shirt and hospital ID badge before saying softly, "I
understand you were once a mother in here?" I detect incredulity in her
question. Her twin sons, who were fourteen weeks premature, have been
critically ill. It is not easy for me to synthesize my reasons for returning, so I
avoid answering directly. From where she now stands, it would be difficult for
her to understand.

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Divine Secrets of the Yo-Yo Sisterhood | Feature | East Bay Express 12/28/09 3:56 PM

In tandem, we glance at the clock to confirm that our required scrub time is
up. We pitch our sponge brushes into a common trash can that divides the
two banks of double sinks, dry our arms with paper towels, and grab yellow
protective gowns from a metal baker's rack in the corner. I follow Lynnette
into Room C, the largest of the nursery's five rooms, where she heads for her
babies lying in separate isolettes. She lifts Diego out of his plastic cocoon and
invites me to sit next to her and rock her three-pound infant. She then places
Miles on her lap. We sit knee to knee so that both boys can hear her identify
herself as "mommy" in a melodic voice that premature babies automatically
invite.

The neonatologist in charge of their case, the clinical nurse specialist

overseeing the babies, three residents, and nurse Jeanette Wallace form a
semicircle around us for daily rounds. Lynnette updates them on her twins'
medical status, much as I did when my son was a patient. At this moment, I
am aware for the first time that I am in a unique position among the unit's
twenty volunteers. I am the only one to have been an intensive-care mom,
though I find it more profound to reverse the equation: I am the only
intensive-care mother to have ever returned as a volunteer.

To appreciate these neonatal intensive care nurses, one must see their world.
The babies who are transported here are among the most critically ill in
Northern California. Children's Hospital Oakland boasts an impressive
number of pediatric subspecialists. Babies with life-threatening conditions,
or those requiring surgery, are brought in from a wide network of birth
hospitals. Once there, every subspecialist required is called in -- I witnessed
this with my own son -- and every resource is applied to save the patient's
life, regardless of ability to pay. Information released by the hospital shows
that in 2001, more than half of the patients at Children's were covered by
Medi-Cal.

In 1995, the year my son was a patient, 571 babies were admitted to the
intensive care nursery. Annual admissions peaked at approximately 600 in
1997 and 1998, then dropped last year to 437 due to local hospital mergers
that increased intensive-care options elsewhere. Despite the flux, the
mortality rate has remained steady for the past two decades at between eight
and ten percent a year. Linda LeFrak, a clinical nurse specialist who has
worked in Children's nursery for 27 years, explains, "The babies that die are
either the extremely immature, like the 24- or 25-weeker, or the child with
congenital anomalies that are not compatible with life. And there hasn't been
a technological advance to save those babies. We don't lose babies in certain
categories anymore."

Children's intensive care nursery is rated Level 3, which means, among other
criteria, that it provides life support through mechanical ventilation.
Unofficially, some call it a Level 4 unit because it is one of only a hundred in
the country that provides the pinnacle in lifesaving technology known as
extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation. That treatment provides days-long
heart-lung bypass for babies suffering from a number of conditions where
the vessels constrict, denying adequate blood supply to the lungs and
therefore insufficient oxygen to the body.

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