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Malena was born on a beautiful spring morning. I spent most of the 5 hour labor looking at a baby oak tree starting to get its new leaves; the new birth of that tree seemed to speak volumes of encouragement to me. When she was born, we were so excited to have another girl in the family (we did not find out the sex of our children before they were born). She was a perfect little girl weighing in at 8 pounds 4 ounces, my first baby who looked like me with brown hair and eyes. But within an hour, she was taken to the NICU for observation because she was breathing too fast. She would spend the first 5 days in the NICU under an oxygen bubble. The doctors never found a reason for the rapid breathing; they told us that some newborns just have a harder time adjusting to the new world around them.
For the next 6 months everything was perfect, our little family seemed complete and we were very happy together. Then during a routine well visit our doctor noticed that Malena was not gaining weight as a six month old baby should. So we started "watching" her weight, every week we went to the doctor’s office to be weighed! Not an easy task with three children under 5 years old. After three months, we were sent to a gastroenterologist, for more tests. Lots of blood work, urine tests, etc. showed no reason for her "failure to thrive", as she was now termed. I hated that term because other than the lack of weight gain, Malena was thriving! She was crawling, babbling, and eating just like all of my friends children in the same age group, she was just smaller! By the age of 11 months the pediatrician wanted to put in a feeding tube, the specialist thought that was silly given her good eating habits. After 3 more months of haggling over the feeding tube, the specialist put her in the hospital for more extensive tests and a nasal feeding tube. I'd like to say the 4 days in the children's hospital were bad but they were actually kind of nice. Being baby number three, Malena and I did not get a lot of one on one time. It was nice to just spend those days playing and walking with her. She learned to walk that week, because we walked and walked – there was not much more to do. Well, just as before, we left the hospital after 4 days with a clean bill of health, but with a feeding tube. The doctors thought that she might just need a short boost. Malena had that feeding tube in for 4 months and did not gain any more than she had in the months before the tube. At 18 months old she weighed only 17 pounds.
We celebrated her second birthday with a spring party. The one thing I remember most is that the bakery really messed up her cake and it was too late to fix it. I told the lady, "Oh, well it won't be her last cake." But it was. Six months later she died.
Our last day with Malena, started out rainy and overcast. It was Labor Day, so Scott was home. He was doing a little work while we waited for the weather to clear. But Malena had woken up with a slight fever, so we cancelled our plans for the day. The kids and I watch movies and worked on puzzles when my sister called to ask me to go to Wal-mart. After we returned from Wal-mart, the weather had cleared and my sister offered to watch the kids so that Scott and I could go shop for a bed for Malena. We shopped for about 2 hours, found and ordered a bed, then headed to my sister’s house.
Once there we decided to have dinner together. Between us we had 8 kids at the time, so the bigger kids had finished by the time we got started. They went out to play in the yard and the adults and two babies (Malena and my nephew) had dinner. Malena finished quickly and fussed to get down. I took her out of the highchair, changed her diaper and set her by the sofa to play. She was not 2 feet away from us. One of my nieces came in a couple of minutes later, then went out. I did not think any thing of it, then I realized that Malena had walked away. When I asked where she was, my sister and I and Scott got up, I started going to the playroom but Scott went to the back door, he moaned, "oh my god" over and over then I heard a splash in my sisters pool. When I turned to look, I saw Scott handing my beautiful daughter to my brother in-law. She was like a rag doll. I called 911, and ran to help do CPR. It took EMS, 21 minutes to arrive and it was too late. The EMS crew worked at the scene for about 30 minutes, it seemed like forever, then she was airlifted to the trauma center but they were not able to revive her.
Arriving at the hospital was like a dream or a bad movie. We were put into a small room, then about 5 doctors came in to tell us that she had died. Then they brought us into the trauma room, and on the wall the board said, "Baby doe"; they did not even get to know her name – it was a horrible thing for me to realize. The last people with her did not even know her beautiful name. We were moved to a smaller room, to say "goodbye" but how do you say good-bye?
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