I miss my daughter . . .

They walk me down those long dreary hallways, my eyes bouncing off those faint blue walls that stretch out, running in parallel strips. My mind wondering -

'When will this nightmare end?

Will she make it - alive?

Will she live a normal life?'

I really didn't know what 'intensive care' meant, except that my baby was seriously ill and . . . echoes of conversations chasing behind us. Not that I cared or could understand much of anything else, because all I could hear was the deafening sound of the blood drumming back into my eardrum.

'I feel so scared...' I remember thinking to myself.

Because deep in my heart, I knew that they were going to take her away, from me.

"It's protocol." The doctor who took her vitals, said earlier. She was a nice tall woman. Black like myself. But Robust.

Nothing in her demeanor told me she understood how I was feeling. When my knees almost buckled beneath me, it was the edge of the baby cot that I held unto. Too ashamed to tell her, but the tears came anyway, and rolled down my cheeks.

Being a first time mother, I felt an impounding fear and couldn't imagine being away from my infant baby girl.

Honestly, I felt like a failure.

'Had I really failed her?'

'Or, was I just being too hard on myself?'

I couldn't ask for advise in that moment, though I vaguely remember the doctor in a easily brush over manner, saying "sometimes, it's not anything you have done . . ."

I tried hard to remember if she had said anything else along the lines - " . . .or may have not done."

'Why didn't she say anything more?' I scolded myself and brush at my cheeks, to verify every trace of tear stain was invisible to other eyes that fell upon me and the little screaming infant, I carried in my hands.

"Put her down here mommy." The nice woman said. Her voice self assured. Her confidence walked before us. We were welcomed by a room full of screaming babies. The room was cool and kind of comforting, so I eased her gently into the foiled over baby cot, they had prepared it just for her. My heart broke. The silence overwhelmed me. I was hurting in every way as I look at them set up the overhead Bili blue lights.

"Mommy we will have to flush her system, because . . . " My thoughts wander over to her, as my eyes caress her tiny frame. I look over at the calm of her breathing. Her little body making short breathing contractions. In. Out. I fought back tears. I needed to be strong - for her. So I started to talk with her - "Mommy will come back for you. I promise." I wanted to tell her so much more, like - 'I'm sorry, that I did this to you.'

But a voice broke into our heart to heart moment. "You will need to step into the feeding room and express breastmilk." The nurse scribble at her pad, making necessary documentations as she asked me some routine questions, like -

"when was her last feed?"

"Do you have pampers? and so on . . ."

I turned around slowly, taking one last look over at the peaceful infant, my eyes stroking the other babies , lying in their cots. Some of them had tubes all the way up their nostrils. My nerves shivered. For a moment, I was able to deflect from my own pain, as I looked over the room and pitied the other mother who had to leave her child too, in the arms of these strangers, people clothed in scrubs, people we had to trust, people we call doctors/nurses, with hopes that one day, each of us mothers, can swaddle our very own baby boy or baby girl, and walk them out of that nursing, intensive traumatic, uncensored room - alive!

I still miss my baby girl, every single day that I walk through those double folded doors, knowing very well, I will return. I always do and still tell her every time I leave her in the arms of a stranger.