Life in the NICU

I went into this part of the journey thinking that the NICU was a scary place. There are times it can be. But mostly it is a place of miracles. Every single day since my babies were born, I spend as much time as I can there with them. When I finally get my ID checked and am allowed to enter, the first room I pass each and every time I go there is a room practically overflowing with machines. I wish I didn't know what some of those machines were for. There are heart rate monitors, respiratory monitors, and one rather large machine that is a respirator that keeps a little baby breathing. My babies aren't in that room. But some one's baby is. Lost among all those machines with their digital displays is a tiny little isolette with a tiny little life inside being sustained. Not all the stories in the NICU have happy endings, but the hallways are covered with posters of children born incredibly small who, with the miracles that the NICU and their staff perform, soon grow up big and strong and smart.

In a way I feel like everyone who has a child in there automatically becomes a part of a special group that all of us wish we never were a part of. I pass mothers every day and begin to recognize them but we never talk. We are all so focused on our babies that we remain strangers to each other. Instead we concentrate on everything the nurses do - how they feed our babies, how they handle our babies, how they change those little diapers that still seem too big on our tiny babies. We all wait for the day when those nurses tell us it is our turn to try to feed our own baby, or pick up our own baby, or change our own baby's diaper - all these things we know someday soon we will take for granted that we can do.

We celebrate the victories of our children in each of their rooms. The victories sometimes are so small but they mean the world to us. It was several days before I ever got to see my babies wearing anything more than a diaper wrapped in a blanket. But one day I walked in, and there was Sean in a t-shirt. The next day, Aaron had on a shirt... a tiny little shirt that was still far to big.

Aaron


I cried the day I unwrapped Sean from his blanket and saw that a nurse had put one of his sleepers on him. My little boy was wearing clothes!

Sean


Aaron graduated to wearing onesies, preemie sized shirts so small I can barely get two of my fingers into the sleeve to pull his arm through. It was another proud parent moment.

Aaron


Then came the day when I walked in Sean's room and he was sound asleep in his isolette. However, pushed into the corner of the room was an "open bed". The tears welled up again knowing that soon he would be weaned out of the warm environment of the isolette and expected to keep his own temperature. And I still wait for Aaron to be big enough to even attempt to move out of his own little cozy isolette. He still has another half a pound to gain before he can give it a try. A half a pound seems like so much since he just weighs over 3.5 pounds now.

In an attempt to get all us silent parents talking, the NICU hosts a parent social once a month. They provide lunch and hope that we connect to each other. Greg and I stumbled upon the parent social on accident and we almost wish we hadn't been there. Our story is sad. Our babies were born early and they are small and we want them home but they are in the NICU instead getting bigger. In the NICU, our story is unremarkable. We met a family who's due date was three days after mine. They have been coming to the NICU everyday since their twins were born in October. One of their twins is now their angel in heaven.

Mostly we all just keep to ourselves. We visit our tiny miracles. We take an obscene amount of pictures of them. We dress them in silly hats and outfits because we are excited they can finally fit into the smallest of things.

Sean


Us mothers hook ourselves up to breast pumps around the clock because providing our own milk is one thing that only we can do. We hold our babies. We feed our babies. We change their diapers. We watch them sleep. We always keep an eye on the monitors. We spend time with one baby and are sad we can't be with the other. We spend time with the other baby and wonder what the first one is doing.

Most of all, we celebrate life and the tiny miracles in it - be it a t-shirt or a weight gain of a few grams or the first time one of our babies finished an entire bottle by mouth and didn't need to use his feeding tube. Today a nurse helped us celebrate another miracle. She broke a rule for us so we could finally, for the first time since they were born, see our twins together.




At the end of the day we leave with tears in our eyes and hope in our hearts. We leave our tiny little babies alone in their rooms in the care of people we just met. The NICU is a miracle so we know they are safe.