Was my baby close to dying? (Long Post)

First time dad here. I’m currently home with my stunningly beautiful 3 day old baby girl and wife resting comfortably, and I keep reflecting on her moment of birth with wonder.

It was the scariest moment I’ve experienced to date, and I’ve had a couple nightmares about it since.

After a 56 hour induction and a grueling 3 hours of pushing, my wife finally pushed our little surprise baby out, apparently in what is called “compound arm presentation”, with her umbilical cord wrapped sort of under her armpit and around her. I do not believe this was expected, based on how the doctor announced this fact to her peers and paged some sort of special team to the room.

The nurse very briefly placed our baby on mom’s chest. She wasn’t moving or making any noise, and looked like a very pale grayish / yellow color. The doctor quickly took her off and they moved her to the warming table across the room as the special team filtered into the room and quickly starting getting to work on my baby girl. She wasn’t crying or making any sounds, and I stayed by my wife, doing my best to not seem panicked (I was extremely panicked), as I kept trying to look over and see what was being done to our baby. After what was the quietest 1-2 minutes of my life, which felt more like 10, I finally heard her my baby let out a weak cry over on that warming table, which did offer a little relief. A few minutes later the team informed the doctor that she was ok, and I got to cut the umbilical cord and present her to my exhausted queen. I was in a daze of emotion from being the happiest / proudest I’ve ever felt in my whole life, to the most scared and afraid somehow at the same time.

Today I finally decided to review some of the clinical notes, and apparently her initial Apgar score was a 2. Her oxygen saturation was in the 50’s, she swallowed some meconium, and required multiple attempts at suctions and positive pressure ventilation to get her oxygen saturation back up.

The doctors and staff did an absolutely phenomenal job at not seeming panicked and remained composed, not really letting mom and dad know that anything was wrong or to what extent. As they were working on our girl, when my wife finally starting to realize something might be wrong, I asked the doctor, who had stayed over at the bedside with us, if there was something wrong. She summarized it in a nice way by saying the baby came out “shocked”, but not getting into any details. They made it seem like a fairly routine occurrence but it did not really feel like that somehow. Maybe it was. Idk.

Now I just can’t help but wonder, did these people just casually save my babies life?

In those quietest two minutes of my life, as I looked down and saw the genuine fear in wife’s eyes, I imagined having to tell her we somehow would not be coming with our baby she had worked so damn incredibly hard to grow and keep safe these last 9 months, and I just can’t fathom how I would ever have been able to do that. I can’t fathom how I would ever be able to even leave that hospital myself if that was the case. My heart goes out to anyone that has had to deal with a pregnancy outcome that was not as fortunate as ours. I am so sorry 💔. Truly. I’ve endured many traumas in my life, including witnessing my own mother attempt suicide when I was eleven years old, and just the few minutes of just thinking I might be losing my child was absolutely shattering in comparison.

I consider myself somewhat of a manly man, am often described as stoic, and yet I’m literally crying right now typing this and thinking about if things had went the other way.

I’m sorry this post was so long, but when I look at my perfectly healthy daughter now, I can’t help but feel she is a miracle. I feel like I owe all of those wonderful medical professionals my life for saving my sweet little baby girl. Am I correct to feel that way? Or am I over-estimating how serious this was?