Being a NICU Mom

This whole week I have done much better emotionally then I ever imagined I could do.

But yesterday (3-26-10) it all just hit me and I had a really hard day.

Somethings in NICU have happened and none of them I guess you could say are huge things but to a new mom who cant even take her babies home yet, those little things are a really big deal.

We call several times during the night when we are not up there to check on the girls and every time we are told they are fine there have been no changes.

Well yesterday morning Rick called and he was told just that, no changes. Well when we get there that afternoon to see the girls I walk over to Molly and Rick walks over to Emma. As soon as he walked up to her he walked right back over to me and said "Emma has a huge knot on her head"

Of course I panic and run over there and yes, she does. A very big knot. Rick calls the nurse over to ask her about and she said that the nurse practioner would have to come talk to us about it. She said it would be about 5 minutes. That was the longest 5 minutes of our lives. We both just looked at eachother and then looked at Emma and then looked back at each other again. We were horrified. Especially since the day before we were told they both had slight bleeding on the brain. So Rick and I just correlated the two together.

The nurse came over and explained to us that it is just a cyst that forms during the trauma of delivery for premature babies and it usually goes away after a couple weeks. She said they did an ultra sound on the cyst and it was fine. Nothing serious about it.

Well thats good news. But the thing that really had me emotional that day is that our fears could have been completely avoided had they TOLD us when we called to check on the girls that there was a knot there but to not be alarmed there was nothing to worry about. You know?

But instead we are just told everything is fine, there are no changes.

There WAS a change. And I just feel like since NICU is already scary for moms that they should avoid all possible fears by filling you in on information such as there is a knot on your baby's head. So when you get there and see it unexpectedly you dont have a melt down.

The day before this on (3-25-10)

I had another tough experience. Visitation hours are closed between 7am and 9am and then again 7pm-9pm due to shift changes.

Well it was coming up on 7pm and Molly was fussy. As long as I was standing there holding her hand or patting her butt she was fine. But the minute I stopped she would start crying again.

Well the nurse that was working with her that day, told me that I had to leave because their shift changes were coming up. I looked at the clock in THEIR Nicu and I still have 5 minutes left with my crying baby. 5 minutes that could have helped her calm down and 5 minutes that could have helped me feel okay about leaving.

The nurse saw my baby crying and she just insisted that I leave. So finally I just told her, "if you want me to leave then you are going to have to fix this, Because i am not leaving my child while she is crying. "

SO the nurse walks over to Molly and starts patting her butt and the minute i turned my back I looked over my shoulder and the nurse was already walking away.

This has been 3 days ago and I still cry thinking or talking about it.

It is so hard being their mommy but not being able to do all the mommy things for them. Especially comfort them when they are sad.

I know in just a few more weeks they will be home with me and I can have things exactly the way I want with them but until then, having someone else put limitations on how to Mommy them is very very hard.

Rick is off this whole weekend and I am so excited because we are going to get to spend almost every waking moment with them.

Everytime we get in the car to head to the hospital my tummy feels up with swarms of butterflies.

Everytime I look at my girls I am in complete awe that these are the faces of the ones that were JUST inside of me a week ago.

It is such a powerful feeling bringing two lives into the world. An even more powerful feeling seeing how healthy and alert they are when Doctors at one point did not even see this in their future.

I look at my baby girls and I see God.