How it feels to have a baby in the NICU

"Why is it that no one tells you that when you start to labor over a child, you'll never stop, and you must remember to breathe?"  Ann Voskamp


That's how "this" feels - like one long labor, but it's not a labor of the body or even of the mind - it's a labor of the heart.  My heart aches, in a way I've never experienced. 

I've labored and birthed four children now.  None have come into the world in the same way.  Each birth has been different just like each child is different.  With a full-term healthy baby, I go from carrying the child in my womb to carrying the child in my arms.  Our children have all roomed in with us during our post-birth hospital stays.  Our newborns are just an arms reach away.  I become it's caregiver in this new world... with Daddy's help.  We feed, change, burp, dress, soothe, cuddle, rock, and protect from the beginning.  That is our role.  That is how God designed it.  Lucy's birth is nothing like this.

Lucy was rushed away after we looked at her for just seconds.  She was quickly given life sustaining treatment.  I was placed in a dark, cold room and was also given treatment.  I waited 28 hours to see her.  I could barely stand, was in a lot of physical pain, but my heart was overwhelmed by the what I saw.  A baby half the size of my smallest baby (Lyra Kate) hooked up to multiple wires and monitors. She was in an enclosed incubator.  I could only touch her, not hold her.  I couldn't breathe.

There is just something unnatural about not holding your newborn child.  As small as she was, I wanted to scoop her up and hold her close.  But I was unequipped to care for all her needs.  She needed a type of care that I could not provide. 

A few days later, we left and left Lucy there, alone.  It still feels wrong for her to be there and me to be here.  I can't stay there all the time.  I can't provide all of her care.  She is not ready to come home.  She is not strong enough yet.  So we wait... and waiting is torture. I hold my breath when the phone rings.  Is it the hospital?  Yes, and then I answer and I'm not breathing but waiting - is this the call that will send me racing to the hospital?  Has something gone wrong?  Is there a bad result on a test?  Has she developed an infection?  And then the doctor says that she is doing well and they are increasing her feedings and I thank him and hang up.  I must remember to breathe. 

Does time not stop for this?  Do the bills still need to be paid and the garbage taken out?  Do we still have to eat?  I don't feel like eating but I must eat to make milk... and Lucy needs my milk.  Do president's still get inaugurated and is the world still turning?  Do we still need to do the mundane of life?  Time should stand still in the waiting.  Our home looks like Mrs. Havisham's home in Great Expectations - frozen in time.  The dust collects and the decorations are still up and we live here but only just.  We are not really living here, we are just waiting.

Every night that I am home, Tucker wakes at 4 am.  He cries and calls for me.  I go and we rock.  He just wants his mommy.  He doesn't know what's different, but he senses it.  He just wants to know that I am here to care for him.  We rock for thirty or forty minutes in the dark living room where stockings are still hung on the mantle and the dark Christmas tree is in the corner.  I think of Lucy receiving her 4 am feeding and care.  Does she know that I am not there?  Does she look for my touch to calm her when her diaper is changed?  Does she smell the nurse and know that it's not mommy?  Is she listening for my voice to call her name? 

I am the mother of four children, not just one.  They need me too.  We are all in pain.  It is manifesting itself differently in each of us.  And daddy is holding it all up, carrying the weight of it all.  The children see me crying and now know I am crying because I miss Lucy.  Sometimes they cry with me. I keep myself busy, but really my mind is thinking of Lucy.  I pray she is alright.  I pray she will come home soon.  I pray that God will give me strength and sustain me for this journey. I crawl in my warm bed and wish I was sleeping on the tile floor in the NICU beside Lucy, but that is not possible. I must remember to breathe. 

I wonder why God did not allow me to carry her until she was 34 weeks?  Why it could not have been me in that hospital bed, connected to monitors and wires?  I would have gladly stayed there, as long as it took to keep her from these weeks in the NICU.  I know God's plan has a purpose but this is a lesson I don't want to learn.  It's too hard.

But then I breathe.  I remember - we are blessed.  I know this.  I watched a mother sit by her son and say goodbye.  He was tiny and sick.  And Lucy is tiny and healthy.  We are blessed.  There are small babies who I've never seen visited.  There are babies in isolation, who've never felt a human's touch without it being covered by a glove.  There is a family there that's son has been in the NICU 6 weeks and he is not as big as Lucy.  They have lifelong battles ahead.  We are blessed. I must breathe and remember this.