Code Red

Late on Thursday night I got a phone call around midnight, saying that Kataraina had stopped breathing and been rushed to Middlemore Hospital in South Auckland. I bawled on the phone, thinking this meant that we'd lost her, but I calmed myself down, grabbed my younger brother and drove to the Emergency ward.

She was laying on a bed meant for adults, so it made her look even smaller. She had oxygen being administered via CPAP, a pulse monitor, and a breathing rate/heart monitor, which was fluctuating between almost normal and extremely low.

Her parents were one either side of the bed, visibly shaken and upset, holding the hands of their new baby, probably hoping and praying that she would be alright.

In the early hours of Friday morning, she was moved from Emergency to the Neonatal Care Unit and into intensive care or SCBU (pronounced: skibboo). She was in the incubator for one or two days before being moved into a bassinet, where she lay hooked up to all manner of machines with no blankets, but what I call a "toaster" above the bed to keep her warm.

She could not wake, did not respond to heel-prick tests, could not breathe on her own or swallow, and she would often suffer from body-shaking hiccups.

They did not know why she wasn't waking and had to do many tests as a process of elimination. She ended up being put on antibiotics as a first response while they continued searching for answers.