First, a warning: This could be upsetting to read if you have a kid in the NICU and you're dealing with a longer stay, and/or serious unresolved health issues.
It feels weird to describe it this way, but as NICU experiences go, ours was kind of ideal. Still incredibly scary and stressful, but I know many NICU parents carry heavier loads, often for months on end.
It is miraculous that a baby born after 25 weeks of development can be saved. Regardless, an agonizing ordeal for all involved. My son was born at 38 weeks (just like his older brother), which is full term. He didn't need to be externally gestated, so to speak, which simplified things.
The reflections below were written in the moment; it's mostly me venting about my own emotions, so there's not much detail about my baby's medical situation. The gist is that my son's respiratory system did not switch over to "air mode" correctly.
11/1, night — It's 10 till midnight on a Saturday. I'm lying in bed next to my sweetly slumbering toddler. I just got up to grab an adult diaper, because contractions have started and my water broke. I let my husband know that we'll go to the hospital in the morning, then came back to bed. Will I sleep tonight? Who can say. [Nope. Contractions ramped up quickly and we went to the hospital that night.]
My second son is wiggling exuberantly in my belly. Well, I can't really know how he feels, but the contractions have certainly roused him. He probably has no idea what's going on, but he can sense that something is happening and this galvanizes his squirming.
Tonight is the last night of my two-year-old having me all to himself. And it's my last night of having him alone to gaze upon and cherish and snuggle. A new phase of life is beginning for both of us.
11/2, morning — Helluva night.
I gave birth. Previous labor: ~20 hours. This labor: ~4 hours. About two minutes after we were admitted I was like fuck it, I want an epidural. Sike, already too late! Oh well, I've done it before, let's get this over with.
After delivery I had a postpartum hemorrhage and lost 1500 [mysterious medical units] of blood. Which is apparently a lot. But not so much that I needed a transfusion.
The worst part is my baby had to go to the NICU for respiratory distress. He's still there and I feel bereft without my little son on my chest. I only got to hold him for a couple minutes.
Of course, he needs care, I understand that. The doctors are still figuring out what's wrong. On the bright side, he's already doing a lot better than when he first went up. Crossing my fingers that we can take him home within a few days.
I'm still really scared and sad. I was able to pump some colostrum so that's good. Hopefully I can visit again soon and sing him the songs that he's heard me sing to his brother so many times.
And you know what? Even when you just lost a bunch of blood the hospital serves low-fat milk with your breakfast cereal!
11/2, evening — Baby boy is slowly improving, and I got to spend some time with him earlier. He's still hooked up to all sorts of machines but I held his hand and stroked his soft warm chest and told him I love him.
My husband is steadfast — taking care of me, washing pump parts, visiting little man when I couldn't. Thank God we're a team.
Our toddler apparently had a great day with his grandparents. Thank God for them too.
I'm so grateful for modern medicine and industrial society. Without the accumulated knowledge and infrastructure that humanity has created, my son and I might both be dead.
The maternity and postpartum nurses and the NICU staff, thank God for them too.
11/3, early morning — Pumping and not getting anything is so demoralizing! Yield was better yesterday.
Reminders to self:
- you are still recovering from losing a bunch of blood
- you are still sending demand signals to bring the milk in
- soon you can use your familiar Spectra instead of the hospital machine
- ditto correctly sized flanges
- ditto pumping bra instead of having to hold everything in place
11/3, late morning — Always impressed by just how dedicated the hospital is to preventing sleep.
11/3, evening — Right boob: reliable, good attitude, contributes to the group project
Left boob: are you even trying?
Same as last time 🤷♀️ I probably just have less glandular tissue on the left or something.
11/3, night — It feels so so wrong to have just given birth and not have your baby with you. I can hardly contemplate the agony of a stillbirth.
Leaving the hospital without him was a bleak moment. It's killing me that I can't hold him.
Barely keeping it together right now, to be honest. Trying to focus on my toddler — who I missed a lot — and to establish a pumping routine.
The doctors think baby boy will need to stay in the NICU for about a week, strengthening his lungs until he can breathe on his own. In the grand scheme of things, not a long time. He's already on the upswing and I know it could be much worse. Nonetheless I'm so sad.
I've only been apart from my toddler for one night out of his entire life. My mom putting him to bed yesterday was the first time he went to sleep for the night without me.
Whereas I will have been separated from his little brother for at least 6-7 nights by the time he comes home (assuming the current estimate pans out).
Baby himself doesn't really seem distressed, maybe since he's working so hard on breathing that he's tuckered out and not awake very much. But I'm heartbroken.
11/4, afternoon — Feeling way better because today I can hold him!!!!!! Ecstatic to have this wee man in my arms. Off the respirator, now just using a tiny CPAP. His lungs are getting stronger.
11/4, still afternoon — In my bump group from my first son, I think around 40% of us had complications that could have killed us or our children. And that's with modern prenatal care and close monitoring.
This post about the historical parental experience of grief has always stuck with me: "Together, they had eight children; seven of them died."
Another couple's awful losses: "When George – their fifteenth child – died in 1642, his father wrote, 'Thou O God hast broken me asunder and shaken me to pieces'. In total, they saw 13 of their 19 children die."
Many things about modernity are stupid but I am so, so grateful to be alive now.
I had a conversation a few years ago with [a friend's] very wise wife. We discussed the grinding misery of the past and the incalculable suffering endured by our ancestors over the centuries, the millennia.
Still in my antinatalist phase at that point, I asked her something like how can it be borne, understanding the staggering cumulative pain of existence? She said what she felt about it was gratitude for the ones who went before and forged the way for us. We have such good lives of abundance, because of what they sacrificed and built.
There is meaning in all of it.
11/4, evening — The thing about taking a toddler to the hospital is he's going to touch every surface 🤢
He's going to put his snack directly on the cafeteria table and then right back in his mouth 🥴
11/5 — Baby boy graduated to "room air," as they call it in the NICU, meaning he can breath on his own!
Soon I get to try latching him to nurse for the first time 🥹 And my milk has come in so there's plenty there.
Today is a good day.
11/6 — There is surprisingly little crying in the NICU, because they're allowed to break ~every safe sleep rule and actually make the babies comfortable. The only one I haven't seen is babies on their bellies.
11/7 — Baby is latching well but almost instantly gets too sleepy to actually nurse. Having the same problem with bottles, though more success there — occasionally he'll drink most of a bottle. Feeding is the next challenge before we can bring him home!
11/8, morning — Baby needs to get to 80% of feeds by mouth before the tube can be removed. That's the next milestone toward coming home.
The bummer I've realized about breastfeeding in the NICU is that it might slow the timeline. Nursing tires him out, which makes him more likely to need tube-feeding versus staying awake enough to drink from the bottle.
I will keep trying at least once a day so he maintains the ability to latch. But there's a very real possibility he comes out with a bottle preference and I don't get to nurse him. Which: not the end of the world. But I love nursing my babies 😔
It's possible to find success stories even with longer NICU stays than ours is likely to be. Still, ugh
Part of this dynamic is that he needs to take a ~full bottle (currently 2.5 oz, so not huge) every three hours. If we weren't in this whole NICU situation and I were breastfeeding normally at home, I'd probably be nursing every hour and he'd be getting smaller amounts more frequently.
11/8, afternoon — Is it postpartum depression, or just a depressing postpartum?
Hot pumping tip: cry while doing it.
May I also recommend crying while driving?
11/8, later afternoon — Okay, emotional whiplash today. He's off the tube! Pulled it out and they decided not to replace it, provided he keeps eating well. Doing better with bottles. Then when I arrived, he did an actual feed at the breast!
Apparently he's waking up more often than every three hours and getting MAD because he wants to eat again before the schedule dictates. So now he's on "ad lib" feeding, meaning he gets a bottle whenever he wakes up and wants it.
11/9 — This whole NICU situation has not been great for my toddler's diet 🫠
But we can fix that soon because we're looking at discharge tomorrow!!!! Baby boy figured out bottles, and we can work seriously on nursing once he's home.
Hallelujah, so excited to have both my boys under one roof 🙌🥳🤞
11/10 — Today we got to bring our boy home!
Header art: Figurine of a seated baby, Cypriot, 3rd century BC.
