The NICU is a place you are extremely grateful for but you also dread its existence. You are so thankful that your fragile baby has around the clock expert care but you also hate that your baby has to be there without you. And then when you are there you feel awkward - you’re the mother but his caretaker is the nurse - you have to ask permission or for help to hold the baby (so many lines/drains so it’s not easy to pick them up). It’s also just heartbreaking to see the other babies that have been there for weeks or even months. Jack’s isolette/crib/bed was next to a baby born at 24 weeks (on April 8 actually) and it was July 12… he was still tiny with a young mom who we witnessed have hard conversations about her capacity to care for such a tiny fragile baby. The baby on the other side was born via c section because his organs were on the outside of his belly (omphalocele) and he cried and cried and cried. (We actually had a mom bring a baby with this same diagnosis to our house in Uganda looking for medical help- it did not survive despite putting them on a bus to the capital city for help). When you walk in and hear your own baby crying and know it’s yours and you just hurt inside because you weren’t there faster to comfort them (even though they have a nurse doing their best right nearby).
Like I said. You are grateful but you are also gutted.
The NICU nurses did an incredible job educating us on all the protocols and explaining the lines, the monitors, updates from rounds, plans for the day. They are the real MVPs of education and often their opinion is worth its weight in gold.
Holding your newborn in the NICU. Hmmm there is no privacy for skin to skin - granted I did just give birth in front of 18 humans but still! The small partition they would put up helped, a little. Still worth it to be able to hold Jack for hours. Precious hours that we didn’t get the privilege to have again once he left the NICU at 5 days old.
Jack had to be on a medicine called prostaglandins to get a small duct (PDA) to stay open to allow blood flow to circumvent the heart - this duct is used in utero to route blood to the umbilical cord to get oxygenated by mom and usually closes up in the days following birth. Mind blowing. The medicine made him feverish and fussy. He was on other medicines too to keep his heart rate up and they started some low volume parenteral nutrition (IV nutrition too). He had lots of IV and central lines via a couple different access points. We had to leave the area for those line insertions too so it would be sterile (despite being in an open room with 4-5 babies in the area…)
I think that like life: the NICU is often a balance of holding the heavy and the beautiful at the same time. The good and the hard. New babies, given access to great care to which we don’t take for granted but heavy because it isn’t what we would have chose for our precious newborn.
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