Israel

Vitamin D

By Yulia Omorov

One of the things I’ll not forget in my life happened when I was 34 years old, after my second delivery with my beautiful 10-day old daughter, Adell. In August 2019, in Miami, Florida, just one regular day ended with an ambulance and a lot of crying and panic.

I delivered my second child in U.S, which was a new experience for me. All nurses were so kind; they convinced me to nurse. I stuck with it and did my best, since my first delivery I couldn’t nurse. On the day Adell was 10 days, we tried to give her vitamin D, and everything happened so fast. She just finished nursing, and the second I disconnected her from my chest, she opened her mouth to breath. At the same moment my husband was ready with syringe filled up with liquid vitamin D. He deftly squirted it into her mouth, but Adell instead of swallowing just took a breath. All the vitamin passed into the lungs instead of into the stomach.

This moment everything just happened so fast, and I felt like on movie set. My husband held her, she was unresponsive and didn’t move; Adell looked like she was not with us at all. I’m dramatic person, while my husband isn’t. This moment both of us couldn’t focus. Something definitely was wrong, so I called ambulance. My condition didn’t allow me to think clearly, and English just flew away from my mind. I asked them to speak with someone who speaks my language, Hebrew. I think all this took 10 minutes, but for me it lasted forever.

The Paramedic comes to check her. Because she didn’t breathe well for a while probably, it affected the oxygen saturation test; her oxygen was very low. Paramedics advised us to go to the hospital, so we decided to go there. I left with Adell in ambulance; my husband was behind us, and my mother-in-law stayed at home with my oldest son. The moment we entered hospital, a couple of nurses came to us to ask a lot of questions to prepare us for a doctor. After the doctor checked her, he decided to do a blood test. Instead of test her from spine, he decided to do it from her hand. During half hour two nurses were tried to find a good vein for it. All this time I was holding her; she and I were crying. There was a moment that I just can’t hear Adell’s cry, I told them to stop and don’t touch her. After doctor’s explanation, I agreed to continue. When it’s done, I hugged her and nursed her for a long time. She was fine, all results were fine, but we stayed for one more night in the hospital just in case.

I know it now that we were too panicked. The worst thing about this incident was here blood testing because it lasted forever for me. It’s easy to say now, after you had checked, that it wasn’t necessary to go to the hospital. My husband and I still have this disagreement about it. The important thing is that she is ok.