It took me three entire nights once I got home from the hospital to finally stop feeling like I couldn't breathe.
I'd lay in bed with these two tiny beings beside me in their little bassinets and I felt like I couldn't catch my breath. My heart would race throughout the night and I remember feeling like I needed to get control of myself before starting to gasp for air. It was something I had never experienced before, but looking back on those first few days out of the hospital I know now that it was from those days and nights in the NICU and on the Paediatrics floor that I'll now never forget. I've since learned that there is something called NICU PTSD--I'm not sure if that's what I experienced, but I can tell you it was difficult, emotional, draining, stressful and hard. Really hard.
The series of events that unfolded during those days in the hospital all compounded one on top of the other, until my body and my mind began to not be able to take any more. The fears, the stress, the anxiety, the surgery, the recovery, the sleepless nights, the noises, the experiences and the longing to take my babies and run from this place that told me that they weren't okay--it was all just too much for one mama to take.
It's all a bit of a blurry dream at this point--the moment that they snuggled those sweet babies up to my neck right after they were born, then just moments later they told me they were taking them away--and they were gone. My breathing started to deepen and my heart started beating a second beat the moment I watched them being taken out of the room. Because no mother should have to watch her babies being taken away just moments after breathing them in for the first time.
I remember lying there on that operating bed, feeling the room begin to quickly empty as masked nurses and doctors shut the door behind them, trailing after our babies. It got quiet as the OB carefully stitched me up and as nurses fussed over my paralysed legs and body, wiping my stomach down and covering me up again.
They wheeled me into the recovery room as they watched carefully as the feeling in my body began to come back again and I was well enough to sit in a wheelchair.
I was dying to see our babies. Hours passed. I had no idea if they were okay.
I remember just willing my body to move the way that I wanted it to, convincing the nurse that I was beyond capable at this point of getting into a wheelchair and being wheeled down the hall to see them.
It felt like an eternity before I heard those blessed words "Do you want to go see your babies now?".
And that's when the true heart palpitations really began.
No one warns you about what you are about to see. No one prepares you.
So as I was wheeled in through those NICU doors, and turned the corner towards two incubators side by side in a darkened area of the NICU, I wasn't ready for what I was about to see.
Our two tiny babies, completely enveloped in cords, machines, tubes down their throats, tubes down their noses, breathing machines attached to their heads and cords everywhere.
I could barely breathe.
You can't touch them, we were told. One is doing alright, but the other one is not.
My heart dropped right then and there.
What does that even mean?? Is he going to die? Is he going to be okay?
I stared at both of them, just willing them to feel me, to know that their mama was right there with them...through the plastic and cords and tubes and alarms going off--I wasn't going anywhere.
So Terry and I waited patiently at their bedsides, following doctors orders as we just peered in through the plastic at them--until finally the day came when they let us touch them.
Stretching our hands carefully through the holes on the sides of the incubators, we laid our hands on our babies for the first time--and hoped they knew it was us.
I remember that moment so vividly now--placing my hands on each of them and rubbing their tiny backs, telling them that we loved them. That Kleenex box on top of the incubator was placed there for me moments after tears began rolling down my cheeks as I told their NICU nurse how helpless and terrible I felt not being able to hold them, nurse them and care for them the way I have all of our other babies. The weight of guilt hit me hard and grief poured down my cheeks as Terry hugged me and that sweet nurse talked me down.
The NICU is a hard place to be in.
I stayed there and lived in the NICU with our babies the entire time that they were there. Struggling with the pull between being at home caring for our other four kids and knowing that I needed to stay to care for our babies. I wanted them to know that their mom was there, I didn't want to miss a moment of those first few days of their life.
So our family came to us--our sweet kids meeting their new brother and sister for the first time, trying to grasp what the NICU meant and why their mom had to be away and why their dad kept going back and forth from the hospital to home. Our parents and family kept us afloat during those hard days--bringing our kids to us, tucking them in at night, bringing food to the hospital and distracting 4yr olds who cried every time it was time to say goodbye to me again.
It was hard.
But through the tears and stress there were also moments of bliss--like the time that they finally let us hold our babies for the first time. Their tiny bodies skin-to-skin on us, cords everywhere, breathing machine loudly reminding us that they were still so so fragile. But it really was the best moment ever.
As the days turned into night and the sounds of alarms going off, machines beeping, nurses and doctors showing up in large groups every day to discuss our babies in front of us--the days began to blur into each other. But slowly but surely I began to watch as the nurses began stripping away one cord at a time, one tube at a time, one breathing machine at a time--until our babies began to look like they weren't as sick anymore.
"Their breathing is under control now, so we're now just going to have to wait until they're strong enough to breastfeed so we can remove their feeding tube", the nurses told me. "It will be weeks before they're able to feed properly since they're preemies. They likely won't go home until their due date--August 17th".
"August?!" I remember saying to her. "I just want to get them home. I don't want them in here for weeks on end".
And she looked at me like I had no idea what I was talking about.
Because I didn't.
So she left, that sweet nurse. And I got to work.
Determined to get these babies feeding, I sat with both of them for hours on end--singing to them as I encouraged them to feed, teaching them how to do it, helping them with every gulp, telling them that they could do it and reminding them that this was our ticket out of here--they just needed to eat.
I'll never forget the look on the nurses face when she came back the next day and saw me nursing Blake. The little boy who wasn't even breathing without help just a few days before, the little boy who I was told to not even bother trying to nurse yet since he simply wouldn't be capable of it.
She looked over my shoulder as he gulped away, latched perfectly, eyes closed enjoying the one thing that I knew I could do for him amidst all of the guilt of everything that I couldn't while in the NICU.
"Well, I guess you just proved me wrong young lady!" she said with a laugh. And I smiled quietly, and continued to show her how I had gotten Hailey to also now feed just as well.
We were moved down to the Pediatrics floor a couple of days later, knowing this would likely be our last night in the hospital. The NICU was bursting with sick babies at this point, and we were told our babies were doing so well that they could be transferred down while still being in the safety of nurses on the floor where sick children stay.
I thought it was a dream come true. I thought it was our ticket out of there. I thought it would be wonderful. So I remember taking this picture of the nurses wheeling our babies out of the place that reminded us how ill they really were--into a place where it would likely tell me that they were on their way home.
Little did I know that that one night on the PEDS floor would leave me gasping for air for the next three nights.
They set us up in a room directly beside a very sick little 2yr old girl. I glanced through the large glass door of her room as I walked by with our babies and noticed this tiny little child. With only patches of hair left on her sweet bald head, her face bloated from the cancer medication and her mother trying to sooth her into taking a nap in the over-sized metal hospital crib, my heart completely sank.
She was trailing an IV pole around beside her and there were a few toy blocks left on the bed that her mother slept in beside her.
I couldn't stop thinking about her.
The day quickly turned to night and the lights went out as I settled in beside our babies, nursing them to sleep.
Then it all began.
It was 9pm and I could see nurses in the hallway suiting up--covering their entire bodies in yellow gowns, placing clear plastic shields over their faces and tying up masks over their nose and mouths.
They looked intimidating and scary to an adult, let alone a child.
"No, no!" I heard her little 2yr old whimper when they opened her door. She knew they were coming for her. I could feel her anxiety and fear. She had experienced this likely many times before.
I froze, not knowing what to do.
Then it continued. She cried, that poor little girl. She cried, and screamed and with few words that a 2yr old even knows, all I heard was "Ouchie, ouchie, ouchie! Mama! Mama!".
And tears rolled down my cheeks along with her.
It didn't last long, as whatever procedure the nurses were doing they did it quickly. But it left me aching for this poor tiny child.
I laid back down, wiping my own tears away and I tried to go back to sleep--hoping the little girl was tucked into bed now too.
It was 11:00pm when I was woken up by the sounds of unbelievably loud alarms ringing out, and nurses yelling "Are you okay? Are you okay?" as they ran down the hall and swung open the door next to mine. I heard her tiny cries again. Her monitors were blaring, screaming for someone to help her. I didn't know why.
I felt paralyzed with anxiety. I didn't know what was happening. Her cries got louder, her screams began to fill up the entire floor and those gut-wrenching pleas for the nurses to "Stop! Stop! Ouchie, ouchie! No! Mama! Mama! " just about killed me.
I balled my eyes out, in my dark little room, praying for it all to stop for her.
I held my babies tightly, as my own tears dripped down onto their sleepy bodies and I just kept praying for her pain to end.
It was almost midnight by the time that her cries settled, the nurses had left and the lights went out again. I wanted the night to end. I willed daylight to come.
Then just when I thought it was all over, the clock read 1:00am, and the fire alarm in the hospital went off. Huge loud ringing sounds echoed through all of our rooms, and "Code Red!" could be heard over the loud speaker.
Patients started to open their doors, escaping into the hallway just as I was about to do the same--but just as I started to jump out of bed I heard nurses yelling loudly at people to "Get back into your rooms, this is a real fire alarm!".
Everything about that statement felt wrong.
We flee fire.
We run for our lives.
So getting back into our rooms, shutting the doors and waiting as the alarms ran out around us felt unbelievably wrong.
My heart was pounding as I grabbed my two tiny babies and started to work out scenarios in my mind as to how I was going to escape with both of them if the fire got too close. Panic was all that I felt at that moment. My heart, already racing from the cries of the little girl next door all night long, could barely take any more.
I don't even know what time it was when a nurse came into my room to check on us. The fire had been controlled, wherever it was in the hospital, and I had closed my eyes for only a few minutes, hoping to will the night to be over sooner.
So when I watched the sun creep into my room the next morning, I was thankful for a new day.
I packed our bags that next morning, being told that we were allowed to now take our babies home.
I called Terry early that morning to tell him the good news and he said he'd be over to get us in a few minutes.
Our little Chloe had just turned 2yrs old the day before, and I had bought her an adorable baby doll complete with a bottle, soother and clothing to dress her in. I told Terry to bring it to the hospital. I knew if I could do nothing else for the little girl beside me, I could give her a brand new doll to ease a bit of the stress. I knew this little girl needed it more than my own.
I asked the nurses to please give it to her once we left the hospital--to just let her mom know that it was from someone who was thinking of them both. But as I followed Terry out of the room, breathing a sigh of relief that we were on our way home, the little girls door opened and a quiet sweet woman stopped me, tears in her eyes, and said "Thank you so much".
One mom to another.
"Take care" I said to her, as I caught a glimpse of that sweet little girl hugging her new doll on her bed.
I walked away and took a deep breath as I left the hospital that day...not knowing that my breath would never come back for the next 3 nights. Because feeling the pain of others is something that haunts you, even once your own pain has gone away.
So we're hugging these babes tight today...
because they're finally home. Safe and sound.
Erica xo
