I recently shared a post on Facebook in support of prematurity awareness. This movement is near and dear to my heart because my beautiful daughter—my first born—was a preemie. It’s not easy sharing this story. When you go through something like that, you tend to shove it into the dark recesses of your mind and forget that it ever happened. But it did happen and nothing in life is easy these days. And I believe promoting awareness is always the right path.
This is our story.
For as long as I can remember I wanted to have kids. So, when my husband and I first found out we were pregnant in July 2013, we were—not surprisingly—ecstatic. Like anyone experiencing pregnancy for the first time, and not having any clue what to expect, I did everything by the book. I steered clear of soft cheeses, deli meats, honey, caffeine (this one was pure torture because I’m a coffee fanatic!), anything the baby books labeled scary and offensive. I switched out my beauty and cleaning products to avoid chemicals. I took all my prenatal vitamins (and then some) religiously and tried to eat as healthy as possible. We even moved away from the city (we were living in Brooklyn at the time) to the suburbs and began working from home full-time.
The first six months of my pregnancy progressed relatively smoothly. I had the usual aches and pains that one comes to expect from growing a human, with mild nausea and not-so-mild fatigue. Then came Jan. 9, 2014. That day began like any other. I got up early and logged into work to check my email. About an hour later I rose to use the bathroom and discovered that something wasn’t right. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like I had lost my cervical plug. I immediately called my doctor, who urged me to come in as soon as possible. Turns out I was right, and they sent me over to the hospital for monitoring. I sat there for hours, hooked up to a prenatal heart monitor, wondering what was going to happen next. But all looked good, so they sent me home with strict instructions to rest, avoid any physical labor (obviously), and keep an extra eye out for anything suspicious.
The night passed without incident and everything seemed fine—until the next morning. It was around 10 a.m. and I had just leaned over to pull some clothes out of the dryer when I felt a warm gush of water run down my legs. My first thought was that I had wet myself (pregnancy comes with so many weird symptoms and issues that it’s almost impossible to know what’s normal or not). But I had literally just gone to the bathroom, so I knew deep in my heart it couldn’t have been that. I had never been so afraid in my whole life. I stumbled my way up the stairs to the office where my husband was working, and I will never forget the look of terror on his face when I told him what happened. Now, my husband is a clinical pharmacist with a background in all things medical. He’s worked in hospitals and as an EMT on an ambulance, so over the years he has learned to keep his expression neutral and to be patient and calm when faced with a medical emergency. When I saw that look on his face, I knew we were in trouble.
We headed back to my doctor’s office, where they confirmed I had indeed broken my waters. It was like a punch to the stomach and I broke down in tears. A thousand thoughts went through my head in that moment: How can this have happened? We’re only 32 weeks along. Will my baby survive this? Is my baby even fully formed? What happens if I go into labor? Can they prevent me from going into labor? Will my baby end up in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)? Is my baby going to die? Should I have stopped working sooner? Did my insanely stressful job cause this? And the biggie: Is this all my fault?
When we got to the hospital, I remember thinking how eerily quiet it was, especially considering we were on the labor & delivery floor. Nothing seemed real. It was as if I had left my body and was floating above the scene. I remember meeting some of the nurses who were going to take care of us and who would become my saving grace in the following few weeks. They were the ones who told me I would have to stay in the hospital until my baby was born, but no one seemed to know how long that would be. The doctors didn’t want me to go into labor (obviously) because at 32 weeks, my baby’s lungs weren’t fully developed. So, I had to get a shot to move that process along as quickly as possible. The other problem, though, was that the longer they let me stay pregnant after my waters had broken, the greater the risk of infection. There were just no easy answers back then.
Thankfully, my body did its job magnificently. Whereas most women in my situation would have given birth within two days of breaking their waters, I held on for two more weeks! That’s right, with the help of my amazing nurses and doctors, we were able to keep my precious girl inside until she hit the “magical” 34-week mark, which apparently is a huge feat in the prenatal world. (According to my doctors, our goal for labor was 34 weeks. If we could reach that desired milestone, our odds that everything would go well–without any problems–were significantly greater.)
Those weeks in the hospital were some of the hardest days of my life, though. For one, I was bedridden. I wasn’t even allowed to leave my bed to go to the bathroom or shower. Two, I had to stay hooked up to all sorts of machines, IVs, you name it. Three, it was impossible to sleep or even rest because someone was always interrupting me to poke around or change out my meds or adjust my monitors or bring me downstairs for an ultrasound. Four, I was operating under a constant state of worry and fear. Fear that my body wouldn’t be able to last another day. That despite everyone’s efforts I would get an infection. That there was no guarantee my child would be OK.
My one salvation during this time was my husband. Thank God for him. I went into the hospital on a Friday, and he went back to work that Monday. He would work all day long, cook, take care of all household responsibilities, and then sleep over every night at the hospital so he could be by my side. We would sit for hours talking, watching TV, reading, doing crossword puzzles and word search. He would bring me ice cream sundaes and home-cooked meals and other special treats. I would not have been able to survive those days if it weren’t for him. It’s no wonder my friends call him “Saint Nick.”
After almost two-and-a-half weeks in the hospital, my doctor informed me that it was time to induce. The risk of infection was just too great by now that they didn’t want to wait any longer. Being my first pregnancy, I had no idea what I would be up against, but the answer would come quickly. My body did not react well to the medication used to induce. I started shaking uncontrollably, so hard you could see the shivers running through my body. I have never shivered like that before in my life, and I had never been so scared. And then the contractions began, over and over and over and over again. They were not like normal contractions, which come and go. Nope, these were constant, with no relief in between. The pain was so intense that I have no real memory of how things progressed after that. I do remember the pain got so bad that my husband asked my doctor to remove the medication, which he did. But by then the contractions were underway and showed no sign of abating, so they gave me another powerful medication to take the pain away. It knocked me out so hard I have no recollection of that night or even the next morning, when my husband left to return home for work.
When I finally did wake the following morning, I was dilated enough to start labor. (My poor husband had only been at work for about an hour when the nurse used my cell phone to call and tell him to come back.) The actual labor wasn’t so bad (especially after an epidural) and it didn’t take long. And before we knew it, our baby girl was here, all 5 lbs, 7 oz of her (she was on the bigger side for a preemie, thank goodness!). Because she was premature, I wasn’t even able to hold my daughter immediately following birth, let alone offer her skin-to-skin contact. The doctor gave me one brief glance and then whisked her away to the NICU. Watching someone leave with my sick daughter and not being able to follow was torture. But I needed to be strong and healthy for her, so I laid back down and let the doctors and nurses handle their business. Thankfully, my husband was able to stay in the NICU while they administered to our daughter and made sure she was OK.
They hooked her up to so many machines I can’t even remember what they all were. The ones I do remember were a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine to help her breathe, which they eventually downgraded to a nasal cannula (a tube in her nose to increase airflow because she needed respiratory help), and an IV (this required multiple tries because a tiny baby has extremely thin veins). She also had to be placed in an incubator under a Bili light to protect her against jaundice. I am so thankful I didn’t have to see any of this because I never would have been able to watch her struggle and listen to her cry. I didn’t get to see her until later that same night. She looked so sad and tiny and vulnerable lying in that incubator. We couldn’t even hold her that first day; we could only hold her hand through the incubator’s small door. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done—not cuddling my newborn baby girl on the day she was born.
Over the following week, my daughter became the darling of the NICU nurses. She was such a strong, sweet, feisty, charming little fighter and they all adored her. (I don’t say that because she’s mine, I say that because the nurses used to tell us all the time!) She rarely cried, she ate like a fiend (thank God!), and she was so alert and engaging! As I write that, my heart fills with such love and pride for her because she fought against all odds and eventually won! I’m not going to say we didn’t have our scary moments. We had a lot of issues with jaundice in particular. Just when we thought it was under control, she’d have to go back under that Bili light. That used to scare me because she had to wear an eye mask while she was in there to protect her eyes. And if the mask wasn’t perfectly in place…well, just imagine how hard it is to keep a baby from moving or pulling off that mask. I used to worry all the time that it would come off and she would go blind or something. She also used to pull out her nose cannula and her IVs (oh yes, she was incredibly spicy even back then!)—which would really upset me because that would require another round of multiple needle pricks in search of the perfect vein. But deep down I loved seeing that because it meant my daughter was tenacious, and she would need that strength in the weeks to come.
One of the amazing things about the hospital where I gave birth is that, if there’s room, they let the mommas of NICU babies remain on the post-labor floor for the duration of their baby’s stay. So, round-the-clock I would go and sit with her. After that first day, I was able to hold her in my arms and give her the skin-to-skin contact I so desperately wanted to offer her as soon as she was born. What an amazing feeling that was—to snuggle that beautiful blessing from God tight against my heart. You’d have to be a parent to understand what that feels like; there’s just no way for me to describe it. We have a video from that day and in the background, I hear myself say, “I could just sit here and hold her forever.” It was such an intense moment and I will never forget it.
For the first few days in the NICU, my little girl couldn’t breastfeed, but I was pumping like a maniac so that she could at least have my breast milk. That was so important to me in those early days and, thankfully, I produced a lot of milk. Everyone at the hospital teased me about it (in a positive way, of course). They kept a small fridge in the post-labor kitchen so that pumping moms could keep their milk fresh. On any given day if you looked inside that fridge, you would see one labeled vial each for a few different moms and then approximately 5-10 vials for me! I was a regular milking cow and I was damn proud of it! Because I was staying at the hospital, I was able to do as many of her feedings as possible. I skipped one feeding each night to get a few hours of sleep, but other than that I was in that NICU from sun-up to sun-down. During this time, the nurses showed me all sorts of things: how to change her diaper, how to give her a bath and wash her hair, and how to breastfeed in various positions. I’m sure it sounds crazy that someone would have to “teach” me how to do these simple parental responsibilities, but when your first baby is a sick preemie with special needs, all bets are off. I was so, so grateful for those important lessons. They would give me the necessary confidence to handle all these tasks once we finally brought her home.
In the end it was the jaundice that kept my daughter in the hospital for a full week. They just couldn’t seem to keep her number down, no matter how many times or how long she spent under that light. Even on her discharge day (Feb. 4, 2014), they almost didn’t let us take her home. But the doctor begrudgingly gave in after we agreed to bring her back in later that week to check her levels. I remember waiting for my husband to come pick us up and thinking, “I can’t believe these people are letting me take a baby home from the hospital.” LOL. It was so surreal. It was so terrifying. It was so wonderful. We were finally bringing our newborn daughter home and then our happy, joyful, blissful lives as parents could begin!
I wish I could tell you that my beautiful girl didn’t have any more problems after that day. I really wish I could tell you that. Within a month, we would be tested again. Within a month, we would be back in the ER, where they would tell us that our baby had contracted respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)/pneumonia and would need to be transported by ambulance to another hospital’s better-equipped intensive care unit. Unfortunately, our trials were only beginning.
Stay tuned…
