The carnival of strangers have left the room. The lives that were once as close as any humans can be inside my womb and physically attached and completely reliant on me and each other due to their shared placenta have been whisked away, away from me. My legs are numb and I am entirely alone waiting for a wheelchair to take me to NICU, their home for the next 2 and a half weeks. My partner and 13 year old son are with my twins, so at least they are not alone and right now that is all that matters to me.
Finally some two hours after they are born a wheelchair is found and I am taken down to my newborn children, my heart racing ever faster the closer we get.
The double doors open and I am no longer in the Victorian building but somewhere that resembles the starship enterprise. To my right are metal sinks and someone gives me precise instructions on how to wash my hands, dazed and confused I follow dutifully.
I am taken down a corridor to another set of doors and through into the room my babies are in. No one could prepare me for what I saw. My babies are on opposite sides of the room in separate incubators. The last time I saw them and their perfect little bodies with soft dark downy hair covering their heads and beautiful thick vernix coating their steaming hot wet little bodies they were momentarily on my abdomen, now they are alone in Perspex boxes. Wires everywhere. One of my babies boxes glowing vivid ultraviolet, the other one's covered in a blanket. Willow in her blue capsule is wearing an eye mask and curled up in a little nest and both she and her sister Kitty have CPAP masks strapped tight against their tiny little faces, the faces I had waited so long to see.
No one can ever prepare a parent for the likelihood that they might not immediately be able to not only hold their baby but also stare at their beautifully formed face.
A young nurse spoke to me first and I was instructed on how to touch them, how to interact with my own babies. “Premature babies' skin is very sensitive” she said “don’t stroke them, firm touches only, place your hands on them and don’t move them too much”. I don’t know how I even heard her for all the beeping. Beeping I had only heard before during the final 9 days of my grandmother's life.
I was so scared. I looked to the nurse and I begged her through tears to promise me they will be okay, how could she say no? I didn’t give her the option to say no. She looked into my eyes and said “yes” I implored her to promise me and less convincingly she replied “I promise”.
My girls are now 7 and a half and all but for tiny little pin prick scars on their hands and feet from the IV lines there are no lasting visible scars from their time in NICU. Had it not been for NICU they wouldn’t be here today.
Today we will light a candle to remember all the babies who didn’t make it out the other side of those double doors fastened into their car seats and we will think about all the babies and parents living the NICU experience today.
Commentaires