I didn’t understand what it meant for the babies to be premature. Obviously we talked about them coming early but no one explained to me what would happen if they were. It was definitely a shock when they were whisked away after labour to the NICU. When I first saw them, I was wheeled in on a bed and they were in incubators hooked up to machines with little cords everywhere. It was scary.
The NICU is daunting. Those four little letters. I wasn’t prepared for the site of tiny little babies barely 32 weeks old. We were lucky. Our girls arrived at 35 weeks and were a healthy 5lbs. They didn’t need oxygen or extra help like some of the other babies. The suprising thing that did happen was they were fed donor milk. (Thank you to all the mamas who are able to donate.) After an emergency c-section at 5am and almost 35 weeks pregnant, my body was not producing milk yet.
I wish there had been some education on what life was going to be like for a premature baby. Someone could have easily sat us down and walked through what the experience would be like for our babies. In terms of Evie and Poppy born at almost 35 weeks they needed to be strong enough to take a full feed before they could go home.
What did our NICU journey look like.
- First they had NG tubes with donor milk and whatever drops of colostrum I could get.
- Next we started combination feeds. Each baby would be weighed, I would breastfeed and depending on how much they took they’d get the difference through the NG tube.
- Last was full feeds off the breast for more than one day.
- During these 16 days there also couldn’t be any major drops in their oxygen, Evie had to be cleared from the doctor for her jaundice, and their weight needed to increase.
I heard some mamas, before I was pregnant, comment on how a mama in the NICU was being anxious or worrying, but not understanding how the NICU is so different from a regular birth experience is really important as someones family or friend.
As an outsider looking in, here are the things I want you to understand about the NICU.
- After birth the parents are not simply in a hospital room cooing over their baby.
- To even hold their baby a parent needs to take off all outside clothing, scrub hands and arms, up to the elbow, and santize their phone and water bottle, the only two items allowed in.
- In order to hold their baby they need to navigate several cords, it’s not simply picking up the baby.
- To feed their baby they may only be holding the baby while it has an NG feed, not able to breastfeed right away.
- Parents need to leave their baby every day in the care of nurses and doctors.
- Sometimes parents leave a hospital without their baby, going home to an empty house.
- They could be struggling with a traumatic birth or heightened emotions over seeing their baby covered in cords and hooked up to monitors.
The NICU can be a difficult and emotional journey for many parents. Whether you are staying for 2 weeks or 2 months. There are many unknowns and not being with your newborn can be heartbreaking. To all the NICU mamas out there, you are so strong and know you will get through this. For family and friends supporting a NICU family, be understanding, this is a very different journey than a full term baby.
