Remembering the NICU time
I was thinking about the NICU and that first terrible week of my baby's life; I started tearing up alone in my cubicle. I have never written a birth story or about my NICU experience before. I guess I didn’t want to fill precious board space with something so long and personal, but my blog seems the perfect place for that.
NICU time was only one week and by no means as dramatic or lengthy as for other families, but it was my baby, my first born and it hurt.
He was born on his due date via c-section because his heart rate was dropping in the monitors. I never expected him to have any issues because he wasn’t a preemie; but there he was, all 5 pounds and 1 ounce of my baby, not wanting to eat at all, not latching, barely taking in a few milliliters of formula, and his glucose levels falling down to floor.
The first nurse in charge would help us feed him with a bottle, because when we tried, he wouldn’t have any. The second nurse just gave us the milk, bottle, and left the room. We tried so hard to have him eat, but he wouldn’t have any at all. The nurse warned us that they would have to put an IV with fluids on him if his glucose didn’t increase. They would test his sugars at every meal, pricking his brand new skin, squeezing his little feet as if they were lemons trying to take blood out for testing; it would break my heart every single time.
On day two, they took him away to the NICU, put him in a warmer and hooked him to an IV. I stayed sobbing, desperate, and confused; I didn’t know what to think; my breastfeeding dreams went out the window. I felt as if I was in a nightmare. And my hospital wasn’t too good about explaining much either, so that made me feel worse.
I can remember the first time I saw the IV on his little hand; what I felt is beyond words, seeing the IV on my tiny baby. At first I didn’t know I could visit him all day or try to nurse there; no one told me anything. Eventually, I learned I could go at every feeding to change him and feed him and such.
I hold a grudge against the NICU, for not explaining things better, for running a battery of tests on Nicky without asking me first or telling me why or even the results until he was dismissed, for finding more malignancies in him than I can count, and more over because I felt that they were keeping him hostage there even after he was off IV. Sometimes, I think a lot of the things done to him were because we have decent health insurance.
And I can’t help to feel guilty, maybe had I done something different he would have been larger and with no problems. Had I not drank caffeine, had I eaten better, had I not skipped my pre-natal vitamins as often as I did. And although he’s all good now, good size and weight; I sometimes still blame myself; I blame the hospital, I even blame my OB for not noticing he was so small; I guess I’ll have to live with those feelings for the rest of my life, because I highly doubt I’ll ever forget.
Here is a pic of DH feeding Nicky in the NICU:
NICU time was only one week and by no means as dramatic or lengthy as for other families, but it was my baby, my first born and it hurt.
He was born on his due date via c-section because his heart rate was dropping in the monitors. I never expected him to have any issues because he wasn’t a preemie; but there he was, all 5 pounds and 1 ounce of my baby, not wanting to eat at all, not latching, barely taking in a few milliliters of formula, and his glucose levels falling down to floor.
The first nurse in charge would help us feed him with a bottle, because when we tried, he wouldn’t have any. The second nurse just gave us the milk, bottle, and left the room. We tried so hard to have him eat, but he wouldn’t have any at all. The nurse warned us that they would have to put an IV with fluids on him if his glucose didn’t increase. They would test his sugars at every meal, pricking his brand new skin, squeezing his little feet as if they were lemons trying to take blood out for testing; it would break my heart every single time.
On day two, they took him away to the NICU, put him in a warmer and hooked him to an IV. I stayed sobbing, desperate, and confused; I didn’t know what to think; my breastfeeding dreams went out the window. I felt as if I was in a nightmare. And my hospital wasn’t too good about explaining much either, so that made me feel worse.
I can remember the first time I saw the IV on his little hand; what I felt is beyond words, seeing the IV on my tiny baby. At first I didn’t know I could visit him all day or try to nurse there; no one told me anything. Eventually, I learned I could go at every feeding to change him and feed him and such.
I hold a grudge against the NICU, for not explaining things better, for running a battery of tests on Nicky without asking me first or telling me why or even the results until he was dismissed, for finding more malignancies in him than I can count, and more over because I felt that they were keeping him hostage there even after he was off IV. Sometimes, I think a lot of the things done to him were because we have decent health insurance.
And I can’t help to feel guilty, maybe had I done something different he would have been larger and with no problems. Had I not drank caffeine, had I eaten better, had I not skipped my pre-natal vitamins as often as I did. And although he’s all good now, good size and weight; I sometimes still blame myself; I blame the hospital, I even blame my OB for not noticing he was so small; I guess I’ll have to live with those feelings for the rest of my life, because I highly doubt I’ll ever forget.
Here is a pic of DH feeding Nicky in the NICU:
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