Fiona turned 6 months old yesterday. She beams at everyone, and her big brothers are gifted at making her giggle. She’s so healthy, her parents could almost forget that at 9 days old, Fiona was airlifted to Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s pediatric intensive care unit.

Our baby arrived at Dover’s Wentworth-Douglass Hospital full term and normal, an event no less a miracle for happening every day. On our third night home, she slept through the night. What an easy baby! Like all parents of newborns, we were so addled and grateful for sleep that we didn’t recognize the warning sign: Five-day-old babies don’t sleep all night.

For three days Fiona slept constantly. We couldn’t keep her awake for more than a few minutes. She didn’t cry. She barely ate. On her eighth day, the doctors re-admitted her. Hours later, they medevaced her. Jenny and I hugged in our driveway and had the surreal experience of watching the helicopter carry our infant, sick from an unknown cause, over our neighborhood and into the horizon. There’s nothing like that feeling of helplessness.

We never panicked, and don’t want to be overly dramatic about what happened. But it was impossible to watch that helicopter without the thought crossing our minds: We could lose the baby.

At Dartmouth, there were needles and IVs and oxygen tubes and 30 electrodes on Fiona’s tiny head. She was diagnosed with meningitis — a serious condition, but treatable. A hundred years ago, an infant would have grown weaker and probably died. Dartmouth-Hitchcock discharged her after five days, and Fiona’s been fine ever since. We joke that we’d always dreamed of having a child admitted to Dartmouth, just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.

Health care policy is abstract until you get that call that changes everything. Your teenager’s been in an accident and is heading to the operating room. Dad had a stroke but they can’t tell how severe. They found a lump.

In the chaos of birth week, I didn’t call about adding Fiona to our policy. I even had the irrational worry: Would the insurance company use that as a loophole to say she’s not covered for a pre-existing condition? Then, the rational worry: How much will this cost — thousands, or tens of thousands? What portion will we have to pay? How will we know when we’ve received the last bill for the machine that goes ping?

Throughout our experience, we never had a clue about any of that. It’s not like the patient makes financial decisions in an emergency anyway. The hospital never asked, “We can fly her to Dartmouth for $4,000 or we can put her in an ambulance for a grand. What would you prefer?” We didn’t instruct, “We can afford to spend $10,000 saving our baby, but after that, we’re just going to hope for the best.”

Conservatives rightfully celebrated the defeat of Hillarycare in 1994, but then they failed to move market-based alternatives to big-government healthcare. Meanwhile, people had the audacity to keep getting hurt and sick. Others worried about affordable coverage and staying insured. Swelling costs threatened federal, state, and local budgets. The issue didn’t heal itself. It metastasized politically while most Republicans did little.

An exception was Mitt Romney, who tried to address the public’s desire to bring predictability to insurance, cover the uninsured, lower costs, and protect taxpayers. We can, and should, debate aspects of his approach and whether it’s worked, but Romney deserves more credit and less criticism than he’s getting for addressing an enormously complicated issue, and the benefit of the doubt for trying when others would not. Governors and Presidents are elected to lead. Romney did.

It’s not enough for Republicans to say they want to repeal Obamacare. It’s not enough for Romney’s opponents to shoot at the Massachusetts model. Candidates need positive plans to replace Obamacare with something better, that relies on market forces instead of government, that expand coverage and lower costs.

Sooner or later, we all get our turn in the hospital waiting room, hoping for good news about a loved one. And when it’s your baby girl, you won’t be thinking about heath care in terms of ideological theory.

Fergus Cullen, a freelance columnist, can be reached at fergus@ferguscullen.com.