A Life in Three Minutes

What do you do when you hear a NICU nurse say that the baby you’re about to rock “is incompatible with life”? Just what do you do?

I volunteer once a week in the neonatal intensive care unit of a hospital in Austin. I started volunteering in December because of the things I was learning about myself via kung fu: I love babies. (You learn a lot about yourself when you stand still enough and perform purposeful movement of a form called Siu Nim Tao.)

But I knew going in that there are things that come with the territory of a NICU unit, and rocking babies who won’t survive is one of them.

So what do you do? What do you say? You give them a life in three minutes:

You say, “Happy birthday! Happy Thanksgiving! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!”

You recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

You sing. You sing the ABCs.

You tell them that they were born in a place called the United States of America, and though it's not perfect, it's home. And then you sing “America the Beautiful”:

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

You hum the tune of every holiday song you can remember, even the ones you've always found annoying.

You say silly things like, “And the Oscar goes to…you!”

And then you sense a tear rolling down your cheek because you realize how hard it’s got to be to be that baby—and the parents. So full of hope and excitement. A life ending before it got a chance to start.

Too soon, the nurse says she needs to get a few stats, so you hand over the Little One for the first and last time, and whisper into the left ear, “Thanks for coming to visit us. Come back again when you can. And stay longer next time.”