Life in the NICU

It was a normal pregnancy; nothing out of the ordinary. Quad marker and diabetes tests were great, the heartbeat was strong, the baby was moving fine. I was full-term and the Doctor assured us that there was nothing to fear. Yet, less than ten minutes after she was born, our newest daughter was taken from my arms and rushed out of the delivery room. The nurses who had been administering their regular newborn tests explained that she had to be whisked away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit because her blood sugar was dangerously low.

Naturally, my husband and I freaked out. She is the youngest of our five children and nothing like that had ever happened to us before. He rushed after them, checking on our newest daughter to make sure she was okay and in good hands. I was numb, left to answer the questions of the medical professionals around me. It felt like I was swimming in a giant blur. Every person in the room seemed to be moving fast yet talking slower than usual. My body, mind and soul were filled with conflicting emotions. The happiness and relief that normally comes after giving birth were gobbled up by shock, confusion, helplessness, anger, and despair. Anxiety intruded into the core of my being and threatened to burrow a home in my brain.

People came and left, leaving wisps of reassurance in the air. A friendly-faced nurse entered, assisted me in a wheelchair and pushed me into a single room. I was thankful and relieved to be separated from everyone else because it meant that I could be alone to regain my balance.

”You got the best room on the floor," the friendly-faced nurse beamed as she helped me settle in. It was the last door at the end of the hall, and it was clean and pretty— for a hospital room. The windows stretched across the room in an ‘L’ shape. I had a panoramic view on the opposite side of my door, and an extra quarter or so of the area that was next to my bathroom. The views of the deep green mountains through those clear panes of glass made me feel like I was in an upscale hotel. The sterile air, the IV attached to my arm, my hospital gown, and the thick ice pack I wore inside my disposable underwear were the only reminders that I was not on vacation.

It took several hours for my body to recover from a nearly two-day labor and delivery process. By the time I was finally cleared to walk unassisted, my visitors— my husband, children, Mom, siblings, uncles, cousins were long gone. I was alone. I hauled myself out of bed, pointed myself in the direction the nurse had explained to me earlier and waddled down the long, dim corridors that led from my room to my precious baby in the NICU. Every step was painful, and I stopped a few times to brace myself against the IV pole I reluctantly rolled along with me. But the thought of reconnecting with my newest love became a prize at the end of a torturous race. After what felt like a century, I arrived at the door of one of the most sacred rooms in the hospital. I quickly pushed the button to tell them that I was there, and a nurse appeared and instructed me to, 'scrub in' first.

Atop a counter just outside the door of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit sat a box that held sterile, individually wrapped medicated sponges. I followed a chart with directions that was taped on the wall and clumsily peeled the cellophane wrapper off of a sponge. I flipped it over in my hands and inspected it thoroughly. It was an unusual thing. One side was made up of a soft foam covered with a special soap, and the other side was equipped with an acrylic brush with soft bristles that are meant to scrub the dirt out of the ends of fingernails. I hovered over that sink lathering and exfoliating everything from fingertips to elbows for at least two minutes. Then I rinsed, dried off, and made my way into the NICU to see my prize.

In the dimly lit room with my daughter were two other babies: a tiny one in an acrylic incubator with two holes on either side for caring arms, and a slightly bigger baby in a special crib like the one I found my baby in.

All three newborns were hooked up to monitors that showed their heartbeats, respiratory rates, and blood pressure numbers. Two of the babies were attached to ventilators that helped them breathe, while mine wore a doll-sized boxing glove fashioned out of bandages to hold an I.V in place. Her sweet little feet were bound in gauze and hospital tape to stop the bleeding from all the heel sticks they had been administering. I moved the receiving blanket to peek in at her and was met with a bright pink face, which looked exhausted from screaming a thousand screams.

Guilt washed over me. She needed her Mommy for comfort and I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. A thick knot formed in the bottom of my throat and I fought back the urge to sob. I walked by the neonatal unit and felt sad when I was in the hospital after giving birth to my four other kids, but the sadness hits different when your child is the patient.

To compensate for my absence, I grilled *Amanda, the neonatal nurse. I wanted to know everything: what her experience was, how long she was going to be in there watching over my precious baby, what the doctors were saying about my little one. But more than anything, I wanted to hold my princess in my arms, to nurse and talk, and reassure her. We needed to bond. I worried about what would happen if we didn’t.

Nurse *Amanda was sympathetic and patient, answering all of my questions with ease and grace. She rolled a divider into the area that my baby's bassinet was, and put the screen up, creating a sort of temporary wall so that I could breastfeed my daughter in privacy. Then she crept away, allowing me space to sing and coo to my newborn. The room was silent except for the faint blips of the machines that monitored each baby, and as I spoke, I felt like she recognized me.

After I finished breastfeeding and tucking my daughter back into the clunky plastic bed, I asked Nurse *Amanda about the other two children. She gave me a sharp, wide-eyed look and topped it off with a verbal slap. “It’s against the law for me to tell you that— it’s patient confidentiality. If you want to know, you have to speak to the parents but we can’t tell you about their babies any more than we can tell them about your baby.”

It was understandable because she was right. I wouldn’t want someone else to ask for information about my baby. But, since my nurse woke me to return to my daughter's side for feeding every two hours, I spent a lot of time in that small, sterile room. I learned very quickly that sitting very still and quiet behind the nursing screen with my youngest child had its advantages. I was able to listen in on the hushed conversations of the medical personnel. For the next three days after I gave birth I returned to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit religiously to care for my newborn and got a solid earful of nurse’s stories.

I listened to the gossip about the doctor who cut his long curly locks off and his not-so-secret affair with a co-worker. And I learned that the best place to get lunch was not in the cafeteria, but from “hot dog man” at the front lobby of the hospital. I also heard the privileged information that I had been curious about but was forbidden to know. The larger child in the middle bed, for example, had been born to a pair of drug addicts. He had been living in the NICU for twenty-eight days and survived with a feeding tube and a special drug to wean him off of the one that was already in his system since before he was born. He was technically brain dead, so two of the midday nurses gossiped about him as if he was both lifeless and useless. They 'joked' with each other about his situation, and clucked their tongues at the fact that no one in his entire family wanted him. "You adopt him, you can make extra money." One teased, while the other laughed and retorted, "I already have a dog."

Looking back at it, I feel ashamed that I didn’t stop them from talking about that baby, not only because he was completely innocent, but because he was much smarter than they gave him credit for. Whenever I stopped to say hello to him, his eyes sparkled and his vital statistics spiked, showing his excitement at a few seconds worth of positive acknowledgement.

They didn’t speak much about the tiny one in the incubator, but on the third afternoon of our stay, I had a conversation with his mother and was relieved to learn that she shared the multitude of feelings I was having. She confessed to me that she also felt helpless, sad, stressed, angry and cheated.

Her son was the complete opposite of my daughter; he was born at thirty-three weeks and weighed in at three pounds, while I carried my ‘little’ nine-pound nine-ounce girl to thirty-eight weeks. I shared with her that I was fearful of having another child after seeing mine in so much pain from the constant blood testing and I.V. pricks, (they told me they couldn’t find her vein so they stuck her so much she resembled a patched up doll) and she shared that she didn’t want any more children because she felt like something was wrong with her body. Her deep fear was that she couldn’t hold the baby she just gave birth to until full term, so she would have a hard time carrying another baby in her uterus past thirty-seven weeks.

She choked back tears while we spoke because she was forced to share a room with another woman who had the fortune of having her baby in same the room sleeping right next to her bed. I empathized with the other NICU Mom. My room felt empty, as did my arms and lips— but to have to share a room with someone who constantly complained about the crying, lack of sleep, middle of the night diaper changes and the short painful walks to the bathroom while her roommate had to endure going without must have felt like torture.

I once had to share a room with another Mom whose new baby was in NICU. After my third child was born, and my roommate’s husband held her as she cried, I was that fortunate woman who complained about changing diapers as my new baby slept peacefully beside my bed. While described her as if she were a monster, I flinched while remembering my behavior and those things I took for granted back then.

Back and forth we went, our words lulling each other into calmness. It might seem strange, but her words were like medicine; the more we spoke, the better I felt. We spoke twice more before she was told she had to go home. Those few fleeting moments that we shared felt much needed.

When I wasn’t eavesdropping or sharing pieces of my life, I was busy observing the bustling, yet quiet little world I had become a fixture of. All three of the babies seemed to pick up and carry the energy that lingered on everyone around them. One of the nurses was extremely grouchy. She wasn’t friendly to anyone, spoke with a sharp bite and handled the babies as if they were stuffed toys. All she had to do was walk by the cribs and she would set their wails off. Another nurse seemed inexperienced and almost fearful of small children, which only caused the babies to squeal uncomfortably. And two other nurses held the newborns with certainty and purpose, instilling peace in them. I barely heard a peep out of the little ones whenever either of those two were in the room.

My observations helped me reflect on the way energy affects sickly people. I began approaching my daughter differently. Rather than touching her with sadness and worry, I rocked and reassured her with strength and the confidence that she would be coming home with us faster than the nursing staff told me she would.

I gradually grew to look forward to my time spent in the NICU rather than dreading it and became friendly with *Emily, the head nurse of the Neonatal Department. I learned that she had been working in that department for twenty-five years and that she had seen a lot of good and bad in that period. Because of her experiences, she appeared brisk and blunt, but underneath her hard exterior, she was sweet and kind. She wept when the parents wept and cheered when the parents cheered so she celebrated with us when the doctor gave his clearance for the baby to come home with us on the fourth day— Friday, rather than Sunday, as was expected.

I packed quickly, happy to be leaving the maternity ward and reuniting with my husband and our older children. We gathered our chubby bundle of love and fled the hospital with joy on our faces. My memory of the dim, quiet room, the tiny acrylic cribs and incubators perched high on wheels, the sterile smell of medicated soap and cleaning supplies, the monitors beeping whenever a baby’s vitals dipped or rose too high, the helpless squeals of uncomfortable newborns, and the nurses— both warm and cold is enough to last me a lifetime. I am forever grateful to everyone who helped me and my child feel comfortable, and I will forever remember life in the NICU.

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of the people in this story.