If you missed Part 1, find it here.

The doctors and nurses huddled around my little preemie as they wheeled me out to my room. I didn’t get a good look at her. I had a rough idea of her tiny size, but that was it and I had no clue what a baby of that gestation would look like. Would her skin be translucent? My husband stayed behind to make sure she was ok.

They wheeled me into the room I would spend the next couple of days. I had to share a room with another mom for a bit since the hospital was so packed. When I heard her baby cry, and her trying to nurse, it didn’t make me feel any kind of way. I was strangely euphoric. I can’t explain it. My baby was on life support and I was all smiles. I think back on that now and I’m shocked I wasn’t devastated. I was in denial. Some sort of defense mechanism I had no doubt picked up from my childhood. I saw the looks on everyone’s faces as I sat there happy as a clam, but I didn’t care. It was the only way I knew to protect my heart from the fear welling up inside me.

I got up to take a shower and I passed out on the toilet because of all the blood I had lost. I couldn’t walk to go see her. That became my excuse. I didn’t want to see her. I was too afraid. They kept asking me if I wanted a wheelchair, and I cheerfully declined. My husband was with her as she made her way to the NICU. She was not alone. She was fine. When he returned, he said she looked good, and she was beautiful. That was enough for me. Just fine.

“You have to go see her now.”

Finally, a nurse told me it was time. I knew I couldn’t pretend forever so I agreed. They brought a creaky wheelchair and wheeled me down the halls to where she would spend the next 3 months. It felt like the halls went on forever. We got to the locked doors, picked up a phone, and gleefully asked to enter the NICU. The doors opened, and this was it. It was fairly dim, quiet (other than the beeps and whistles of machines), and the NICU nurses gently greeted me. It felt very peaceful and calming in there. Everything was fine.

They wheeled me over to scrub in. I had to use iodine and a scrub brush and wash for 2 minutes all the way up to my forearm because, with a preemie, ANY illness can turn them septic. Cleanliness was extremely important. I wanted to keep washing. I wanted more time. More time pregnant, more time for her to grow, more time in my strange euphoria.

My husband tried to be cheerful as we got closer to her incubator.

I took one look at her and broke down. Ah. There is the devastation I was expecting. But, once again, the nurse yelled at me for crying because I touched my face to wipe my tears. “If you touch your face, you need to scrub in again!” I did, as I sobbed for 2 minutes. Then I wouldn’t cry again for a while. I looked at my sweet baby. I couldn’t really see her face. She was covered with so many tubes and contraptions. She was extremely jaundiced so she had tiny sunglasses on. Her diaper was smaller than the palm of my hand and she was swimming in it. I wondered how this was real life.

I couldn’t hold her yet, but after a few days, they let me gently place my hand on her back. The stimulation of too much touching and movement is irritating for a preemie. I spent all day at the hospital. Just sitting with my hand on her back, intermittently, so her incubator could stay at the right temperature. We had to keep the lights dim, and stay quiet so as not to over stimulate her. I would just stare at her monitors. Anytime she stopped breathing, I’d give her feet a little tickle and she’d start back up again, and so would my heart.

But, there was a problem.

Her heart wasn’t forming the way full term baby hearts usually do. They gave her two rounds of medication to no avail. She needed surgery or she would die. The only problem was, she needed to be transferred to a hospital that did neonatal surgery, and there were only so many ambulances to do it. She was scheduled a couple times to go, but got bumped by more pressing cases. That’s a tough one. On one hand, I want those babies to be ok, but I also want MY baby to be ok. It was a confusing feeling to say the least.

Finally, a spot opened up because a baby in another town no longer needed transportation. I pretended to myself that he just miraculously healed and everything was fine, but I knew the truth. He probably didn’t make it. But, my baby was getting worse and worse and was failing to breathe more and more, so I didn’t have time to worry about it. We followed the ambulance to the hospital and as she went in for surgery, she finally opened her eyes for the first time. Squinty, like she was looking at the sun. I knew she would be ok. She was. The surgery went fine. It was the longest wait of my life, but she was ok.

At that point, my MIL had flown in from Washington, essentially to drive me around. I couldn’t drive because of the blood loss. I had trouble doing anything remotely athletic, including walking. She was a huge help. My whole family was. I was so grateful for them. The hospital was a couple hours away from our home and it took a lot of help and support to get around. A lot of time off work for my husband, a lot of money on hotel rooms. Everyone chipped in. The hospital even had a hotel we could stay in sometimes.

It was very comforting.

As she healed, I was able to hold her for the first time. She was a few weeks old at that point and it was the best feeling I’d ever felt. There was no rocking, no singing, just still arms and peace and quiet. I held her that way for 4 hours. It flew by. After that, I held her as often as they’d let me. They called it “Kangaroo care” and the most important part was that we had skin-to-skin contact. I guess it helps them heal and develop properly.

After she was stable enough for transport, they moved her back to the hospital closest to us. It was such a relief to have her close by. The added strain of her being far away was stressful and a bit scary. By then, I was able to drive myself again and felt a bit more normal.

One night, not long after her second transfer, she was having a really hard time breathing. It wasn’t like her. She almost never had any apnea issues anymore. I mentioned it to the nurse, but she assured me it was normal for preemies to stop breathing often and there was nothing to worry about. She was very, very wrong.

To be continued…