NICU visit 11 months later

One of Lance’s good friends and his wife had just had a baby at ~37 weeks gestation and although everything was fine with the baby (lungs fully developed, no jaundice) the baby wasn’t feeding at all by breast or bottle and had to be transferred to the NICU instead of going home. They have a somewhat similar story to ours – mostly healthy pregnancy and pre-eclamsia in the end with a c-section. But, the Mom’s pre-eclamsia came on over a couple of weeks and finally at 37 weeks (where babies are considered “full term”) she was induced. Nothing happened for 2-3 days of being induced so they had a c-section.

Although there were many differences between our stories, there were so many similarities.

Lance’s friend had been calling him a lot to get advice, etc. About a week after their daughter was born, he called and asked if I had cried all the way home from the hospital after I was discharged but Alex was still there. He said – yes and it was normal. Lance then asked “Do you want us to come visit?” Yes, he said.

Side note: Leave it the guys! I was just telling Lance that I’m sure they would appreciate a visit – especially since they knew we had been through something similar 11 months earlier.

We visited them on a Wednesday night at a different hospital than the one we were at. I was thinking about it quite a bit the night before we visited. What do we say? What do they want to know? Am I going to be OK with going back to a NICU and seeing this? It was strange to be at a hospital again, smell the hand sanitizer. See how truly small newly born babies are – and have a hard time remembering how small Alex was. See the alarms and leads, and remember how I learned to read them and turn them off. Remember the 2 shifts of nurses per day – every day. Sometimes you were lucky and got the same nurse during the day for 3 days! The breastfeeding struggles. How “congratulations” doesn’t seem to be the right sentiment, for me at least.

I remember very clearly the night I was discharged from the hospital and thinking - how can I leave my baby in the hospital? The root of that question is so deep. I was very sick, had just had a c-section, and still had high blood pressure. Everyone wanted me to “get a good nights sleep” at home. I just felt like it was so wrong, at the time. I felt like everything had already gone wrong and this “choice” I was making was to go home and leave my baby at the hospital. I felt like there were two categories of new Moms – Good and Bad. Going home meant I was already in the Bad category and when you have that many hormones running around your body – you think this means that you will always be bad.

I told the new Mom I was visiting that I understood her not wanting to go home, and that I, too, felt this way when Alex was in the hospital. But resting and recuperating, it does help you out. Looking back, I think I healed faster and was able to take care of him more when he did come home because of resting.

I saw a look on her face – a wonderful smile and a new baby in her arms. From the outside she seemed fine. I remember feeling this same way – outside = fine, inside = totally not fine. Although, I have no idea if she felt the way I do - I felt like there was nothing else to do, because breaking down and realizing the enormity of what was happening (what had already happened) was too huge to comprehend.

I mean – I could’ve died.

Dead.

Alex, too.

If we were in a 3rd world country – I’m sure the chances of this happening would’ve been greatly increased.

Also – the look on my face was probably from the sheer amount of hormones running around in your body – massive amounts that I would best describe as a hormone fog. You are so emotional because of this and I told her that it would get better in about 3-4 months. I don’t know if the 3-4 months helped her or not. I know at that time, I would’ve thought that would take forever!

In the end, I feel like we helped them a little bit, at least gave them a view of 11 months down the road. I was really glad to see them and felt good about what I had told them about our experiences.