NICU
The hospital is a blur of 2.5 hour sleeps, pumping and visiting Ellie. The first night we can spend by her side is in a small bedroom connected to the NICU. We’re so thrilled and I take my first shower, moving oh-so-slowly.
A NICU resident told us that once they took my baby off of her IV, they would want to bottle feed her formula. The medicalized world is so good at sharing worst case scenarios. Because, if I couldn’t breastfeed her right, if she didn’t eat right, if her blood glucose levels dropped, she would surely get brain damage. Brain damage are two loud words when your body is broken from birth and your heart is broken by the fear you can’t take care of your child.
The brand of motherhood I had subscribed to involved breastfeeding and my head would likely explode if I were told that I couldn’t. So, I’m mightily pissed they want to stuff her full of formula right off the bat. We call our midwife and she diplomatically says, they went down a rabbit hole and my baby has no risk factors to predispose her towards those outcomes and we should just try breastfeeding…
We’re finally in our own hospital room with our own baby beside us for the night. We’re told we can probably leave to our beautiful, warm, familiar home tomorrow. The idea alone makes me forget about the burning pain when I pee. A nurse warns us though, I better feed her every 2.5 hours. But how could I forget? I did hear them use the words Brain Damage.
Eyal says to wake him if I need anything during her feeds. But I know who I am, a strong badass mama who NEVER needs help and if I do I CERTAINTLY don’t ask for it. An alarm is set for her feeds. When I wake up I pick her up, imitating the nurse’s handling confidence and painfully stick her to my breast. Pain aside, how incredible to have moments together where I’m not wearing a face mask and where we are finally not under the watchful eye of the hospital.
My alarm goes off again. I touch her and coo lovingly to wake her. I’ve seen moms coo and I’m working on mine! Her sleepy steady breaths hold still. I carry her and tap her body. Still, no signs of wakefulness. I wait, give her some time. I bring her to the well-lit hallway, I speak loudly, I trickle water on her body, I… I… and now she’s an hour late for her feed and I’m wandering the NICU in just my oversized green t-shirt barely covering my oversized belly. I’m following the kind nurse on her night shift as she checks on all the lonely newborns in lonely plastic boxes. I have tears in my eyes. Is every minute so crucial that she will almost definitely suffer damage from this? I’m sitting trying desperately to wake her still and I hear another nurse call to the kind one. This new nurse points to me and says, loudly “she’s not allowed out here and if she can’t feed her own baby then she’s can’t go home tomorrow.”
I’m back in our little hospital bedroom with the kind nurse and Eyal, woken up by my uncontrollable sobbing. (How did I not wake him earlier?) The fear of staying in the hospital just one night longer feels suffocating. And Ellie, my baby, finally wakes. She latches and she feeds and the room becomes still with her tiny sucks.
—Mika G.