A Life In Review

** Disclaimer: This post is not about a particular hospital or a particular NICU. It is about life with a child that requires a NICU stay.**

0 Stars –  “I wouldn’t recommend. There are lots of monitors, scary moments, and waiting around for a tiny human to make the decision to behave. Tubes coming out of noses, mouths, belly buttons, you name it. Needles being poked into tiny little veins that burst so easily. Stressed out parents, who have no idea what they are doing. Doctors and nurses constantly in and out. Oh and watching other parents have their babies admitted, just to turn around and take them home a few days later.”

Let me walk you through our NICU journey (well the shorter version). In all honesty, NICU life is rough. Georgia spent a total of 69 days in the NICU. There is no one that can get you ready for what it’s going to be like. Of course, when each hospital (I started at one before being sent to another hospital) realized I would be delivering 2 months early, they sent in a NICU doctor to try and explain what could/ would happen. I listened and understood the mechanics of it all, but I am a first time Mom, I didn’t realize that when you give birth that person is a piece of your heart on the outside. I was nowhere near ready for the emotional aspect of it all. Georgia made her dramatic (I’ll review that story another day) entrance into the world and was whisked away before my husband and I were even able to meet her. A sweet nurse took a picture for us and showed us what she looked like while the doctors were sewing me up.

No one can prepare you for what a baby looks like at 31 weeks gestation (on the outside). In my opinion Georgia resembled a creepy little alien. When a baby is born that early, their skin is translucent and they need help breathing. There are so many things that could be wrong, so they are given a full work up the minute they exit the womb. My sweet girl was intubated and placed in a warming sack. She was so tiny and fragile. I wasn’t able to see her in person for about a day. When I finally saw her she was in an incubator. She had oxygen in her nose and tubes coming out of her belly button. There was an NG tube coming out of her mouth and she laid there in nothing but a diaper.

I was discharged a few days after I gave birth to her. That was the hardest moment of my life (at the time). I fought back tears all the way to the car. It is a gut wrenching thing to be going home without your heart (sounds dramatic, but I felt like I was missing my heart as I left). While I waited for the car, I saw a few other moms waiting with their babies to go home and start their lives. It was quite the rollercoaster ride.

The first hospital she was at, was about 50 minutes away. I hated being away from her. I wasn’t able to drive so I had to rely on others to bring me back and forth. It was tough. Georgia progressed nicely though and the nurses continuously told us how much they enjoyed taking care of her. She was a pretty low maintenance baby and she never cried. She was able to be downgraded to a lower level NICU only 16 days after her birth. She was finally closer to home.

Her NICU journey continued and so did ours. One thing no one talked about was the anger that a NICU parent can feel. I remember being so angry that that was our life now. I spent every single day at the hospital. I learned how to be a parent in the NICU. I watched as babies seemed to be in and out of the NICU in five minutes flat. People would give us advice and I would grow angry at them because their baby barely spent any time there, what did they know? It was physically, emotionally and spiritually taxing.

Over time, I got to know and love the nurses there. I avoided everyone outside of the hospital because I was tired of hearing “congratulations” and “when is she coming home?”. No one knew the battle going on inside those walls, except for those nurses (yeah doctors are great, but the nurses are the ones that cared for my human day and night when I couldn’t). They are the ones that helped us feel like parents (NICU nurse review coming soon).

I don’t know how anyone could do this without support. We had our families by our side and a church praying over us and Georgia. After 10 weeks in the NICU we were finally able to bring our baby home from the hospital. It was a surreal moment for us. No more monitors, no more back up when things went wrong, just us and this little baby. We were ready though, because unlike most parents we had two extra months with her before she moved in. Now I’m not sure that I will ever let her move out.

My final review is that the NICU sucks. It’s hard and long (for some people) and exhausting, but the end result (for us anyway) was worth the wait. Here’s to 18 years of being in charge of someone else’s life.

** We would like to shout out a special thank you to the nurses and staff at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, and (Yale New Haven Health) Lawrence & Memorial Hospital for their outstanding care of our precious tiny human. **