Charlotte Kent, born in the futuristic world of 20XX

Fig. 1: Charlotte takes a break from the cool cap to try something different. Taken in the McKay-Dee NICU.

As Sarah mentioned in her post, we had a baby. About a month ago. Now that school is out and I haven't started work yet, I've got a bit more time to update the blog.

Sarah also mentioned that Charlotte had to spend some time in the NICU at the McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden. Here's what I have to tell people before I tell this story: Charlotte is fine now, and she's done nothing but normal baby stuff except for the first scare she gave us. Sarah is also fine.

The reason for our NICU stay, for those who are curious: Shortly after we arrived at Logan Regional for her delivery, Charlotte's heart rate dropped and they had to get her out via C-section. The doctors aren't sure what caused it -- maybe the umbilical cord was pinched for a while.

Since Charlotte went without oxygen for a few minutes, her pediatrician wanted to send her to Ogden for brain-cooling therapy. (For some of the science and statistics behind the therapy, here's an article from Shirley Wang at the Wall Street Journal. The story told in the article is very similar to ours.)

They flew Charlotte to Ogden and put her in an open-air incubator. A machine chilled water and ran it through a cap on her head. Unlike the therapy mentioned in the WSJ article, Charlotte didn't have a cooling blanket -- only the cap. The open air cooled the rest of her body and slowed her metabolism, while the cap cooled her brain.

When I arrived in Ogden, seeing Charlotte was a huge relief. I'd been crying my guts out on the freeway, alone, because Sarah wouldn't be released until the next day. I kept worrying and wondering what was happening to her. Would there be more unexpected alarms? Would they need to put her back on a respirator? In the NICU, I still felt anxious, but at least I could see Charlotte and if anything went wrong, I'd know it. Her limbs had been purple and grey right after birth, but now they were a reassuring peach color. And it makes me sound like a complete man-child (see fig. 2) to admit, but the blue of her cooling cap reminded me of Mega Man's helmet, and that helped me picture her as a little fighter.

Fig. 2: From Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton. www.harkavagrant.com

She wore the cooling cap for 72 hours. She would shiver and cry, and then they'd have to sedate her to keep her temperature from rising. The C-section, the NICU and the cooling cap were incredibly stressful, but we feel blessed to have had access to them.

Sarah holds Charlotte's hand in the NICU. This was Charlotte's actual cooling cap. You can see the color  over her ear. There's a white insulating cap over the blue one.