Delivery, Then a Long Wait for Deliverance
With daughters in intensive care, a mother learns to cope
For me, having newborns in the neonatal intensive care unit was like living in purgatory. After months of anticipation--filled with happy tasks like decorating the nursery--suddenly I wasn't sure when my twins might leave the hospital or whether they'd be disabled when they came home.
I was terrified by my first view of Ella and Zoe, who were born two months premature at 3 and 2
It was as if my excitement had been to blame. The pregnancy went smoothly until the night before the baby shower, when contractions began. For three days, doctors at Inova Alexandria Hospital in Northern Virginia tried to halt my labor by using drugs before giving up and resorting to a C-section. Piercing through a haze of medication, my daughters' first, high-pitched cries filled me with elation. But doctors cloaked in scrubs and surgical masks quickly whisked them away.
My husband spent countless hours with me at the hospital, but I felt alone. After months of having my babies kicking inside me, they were now on another floor, and I could see them only during visiting hours. A few days after delivery, I left the hospital empty-handed, staring achingly at other moms. Like me, they were in wheelchairs. Unlike me, they held their newborns.
We made daily pilgrimages to the NICU. A strange listlessness weighed on us. Nothing terrible happened, but we always felt poised on a precipice. One test followed another. Unforeseen setbacks piled up. Each raised questions and worries that no parent wants to contemplate. There was the day, for instance, when we awaited the results of spinal taps, fearing meningitis that might permanently cripple our daughters' brains. With so much to discourage us, each positive sign came like a godsend. At home after a good day, we sometimes feared to call in, perhaps to learn of some new twist that would send us spiraling down again.
It's impossible to be prepared for a NICU experience. But if you face such an ordeal, you might learn from ours.
Understand the equipment. Ask questions, and don't mind the learning curve. Knowing what the machines do will reduce your helplessness. My husband and I were soon comfortable taking our babies, wires and all, out of the incubators.
Get to know the nurses. NICU nurses are like surrogate parents. Learn their names. Call them for updates. And expect their approaches to vary. One wouldn't let us hold our girls very long for fear of tiring them, but most encouraged the contact.
Learn the lingo. Know the medical terms in case you are asked to approve a test or treatment. With doctors and nurses working shifts, you are the only consistent caregiver in the picture.
Take the long view. Measure progress week by week, not day by day. When we followed the girls' erratic growth the way stock traders follow portfolios, we got discouraged by each ounce they lost.
Breast-feed or pump your milk. Many hospitals will encourage you to do this for the baby's health (and provide the necessary rooms). Also in its favor: Milk was a thing only I could provide, so it lessened my emotional detachment.
Touch and talk to your baby. We practiced "kangaroo care," holding each girl upright against our bare chests. The warmth and rhythmic breathing and heartbeat seem to help babies thrive.
Decorate the incubator. The nurses helped us tape photos of our faces and stimulating patterns near the babies.
Befriend other parents. No one will understand your experience like another NICU parent.
Take a day off. Rest before the baby's discharge. You'll need energy when the real business of parenting begins.
After six long weeks, we could finally bring Zoe and Ella home, albeit accompanied by breathing monitors and a dizzying medication schedule. Six months have passed since that second act of deliverance, and our babies are thriving--drooling, smiling, and cooing as if they'd never been hospitalized.
This story appears in the September 3, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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