Blog for Prematurity

Last summer, people would often say to me "it must be so hard to leave your baby at the hospital" or sometimes fellow preemie moms would say "leaving the hospital without my baby was the hardest thing I've ever done." I would always smile and nod politely. But the truth is, it wasn't hard to leave the hospital without him. He was two pounds, he couldn't breath on his own, he was getting all of his nutrition through a central line going through his belly button, his heartrate would drop dangerously low, his blood pressure would spike and "stroking out" became a possibility, without caffeine he would forget to breath (even with the machines) and needed stimulation to be reminded to take another breath. We knew he needed to be in that hospital or he would die. So, no, it wasn't hard to leave him there to save his life.

Prematurity has robbed us of a lot. I didn't fall in love with my baby the first time I saw him. He looked so tiny and so sick, machines were beeping non-stop, and it seemed that everyone else in that room knew what to do better than than I did. Not easy for a first-time mom to realize she is basically irrelevant. Prematurity meant I didn't hold my son until he was four days old and even then it was only for an hour and I was scared out of my mind. Prematurity meant knowing what it looked like for our son to brady and to have apnea spells and learning how to stim him back to life. Prematurity meant he didn't breastfeed until he was nine weeks old and even then, his heartrate would drop so low he'd have to stop. Prematurity meant people stared at us not knowing whether to say "congratulations" or "I'm sorry." Prematurity meant seeing new moms being wheeled out the hospital with their babies in their arms was difficult but not nearly as hard as it was to see pregnant moms being wheeled through the NICU for their tour and seeing the fear in their eyes.

Eighteen months later prematurity still takes from us. Jake stays hibernated to stay healthy, and we stay isolated from the world. We burn through our savings to pay for his nanny. We study growth charts and calculate what rate of growth it will take to hit that magical 50th percentile. We worry about developmental milestones and subtract three months to see if Jake is hitting them at his "actual" or his "adjusted" age. We will most likely remain a family of three (and not four or five like we had always pictured) because medical science cannot tell us why and cannot give us much hope for not repeating the same fate.

But yet prematurity has given to us. We are more grateful. We are stronger. We know how fragile and precious, and yet resilient, life is. We know that life can be fundamentally unfair, but you keep going. We have persevered, and Jake is the most persistent 18-month old you'll meet. We have our little boy and he is wonderful. I cannot say that I see those three months with him as an extra "gift" as some preemie parents say they do, but I'm slowly starting to see it all as less of a burden.

Today is the day to blog for preemies. If you have a blog, I encourage you to post something about prematurity or put up a link to the March of Dimes. Or make a comment here and tell us what prematurity means to you.