I’ve been reflecting back on baby E’s birth and her first five days that were spent in the NICU. There were things that were incredibly hard about it, but also good. Thankfully, she was only in the NICU for five days, which I know is very fortunate compared to most NICU families. But it was an experience that we walked through nonetheless, and I hope that our experience can be an encouragement to others going through it.
While holding my sweet girl only a few hours after she was born, I noticed she was having trouble breathing. I remember watching her closely trying to determine if it was a little temporary thing or if she was truly struggling to breathe. Hitting the call button for our nurse meant acknowledging that my baby was struggling. And as hard as that was, I was absolutely going to get my baby whatever help she needed. But I remember feeling my heart sink. Was my baby going to be okay? My tiny little person that I finally got to meet and hold in my arms was taken away for medical intervention. I cried a few tears and succumbed to my utter exhaustion after a long labor.
I was hazy when I woke up a few hours later, trying to remember where I was, why my baby wasn’t with me, and when the nurse had said the NICU care times were. I needed to pump to try to get my milk supply in, I was starving and needed breakfast, but I REALLY needed to be with my baby. As a brand new mama, the feeling of not being with your baby was heartbreaking.
We spent as much time as we could with her, going to all the cares sessions and holding her in between. There were times when I was just so elated and overjoyed and in love with my baby and was content to hold her close to me. And other times I cried and grieved that she was in the NICU.
While a lot of the difficulty was in the fact that we couldn’t have her with us all the time, it was more hard to see our girl struggling to breathe or eat and all hooked up to the IV and feeding tube and monitors and seeing her foot pricks and leftover marks from failed IV attempts. Those are not things you want to see as a mother, first time or not. I wanted to just cuddle my baby to health, but of course that’s completely ridiculous. She needed that IV and feeding tube and tests. We knew that having her there, hooked up to all the things, was the best possible way to take care of her, but that didn’t make it any easier, especially when we were discharged from the hospital and had to go home without her.
So there were a lot of hard things. But as I mentioned earlier, there were (a few) good things, too.
As terrible as it was to go home without baby E, we were able to get some sleep. I still had to wake up to pump, but we didn’t have the constant care of the baby. The extra rest definitely helped with recovery and made the transition more gradual.
The NICU nurses were so sweet and helpful and gave us a lot of tips and information on how to best care for baby E. This was particularly helpful for Michael since he had no experience with babies. It was also helpful for him in bonding with our girl because at the NICU there were no distractions or other things to do. We were simply there to care for and spend time with our baby, and he said that helped him a lot.
I had a ton of help from the NICU lactation consultants in pumping so my milk supply would be ready when baby E was able to eat, in trying very short nursing sessions to work on latching and slowing introducing nursing to her, as well as how to transitioning her from the bottle to breastfeeding. So breastfeeding ended up being relatively simple having so much support.
We also knew that once we were discharged, our girl was healthy and strong, and we were much more informed about any concerns or anomalies to look out for. In the end we left the NICU much more confident parents than I think we would have otherwise.
No parent wants their baby to be in the NICU, but it was a big learning experience for us, not only in caring for our baby, but in trusting the Lord to care for her, and us, way better than we ever will be able to. It was a hard but sweet time that we will always look back on as a testament of God’s grace and faithfulness to us as we started our journey as a family of three.
