The Loud One in the NICU

Nothing prepares you to have a baby in a neonatal intensive care unit, or a NICU, even if it is just a short stay. All the childbirth classes you take, all the articles you read, all the birth stories you take in, they don't really tell you what to expect. It may give you the tools you need to get through the experience and enjoy it as much as possible, but it's still a foreign language.

Then there's the "it won't happen to me" mindset that everyone is plagued with, probably for the better. It never even crossed my mind what it would be like if Noah wasn't perfect. Correction: he is perfect (... actually, it depends on which hour your ask me, haha. Right now he's perfect because he's napping peacefully in his Moby Wrap). It never crossed my mind what would it be like if he wasn't MEDICALLY perfect when he was born. I didn't really know what the hours and days after birth would be like, but I certainly didn't picture our family being apart, commuting back and forth between two hospitals, trying to recover and figure out what the hell our next move was.

To start, Noah went to what is probably the state's best Children's Hospital. We had to option to send him to CHAD (Children's Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock) or Children's Hospital Boston. We chose CHAD for commuting reasons. The thought of sitting in a traffic jam on 93 that soon after giving birth felt like the 7th level of hell to me. I spent 6 years in Boston traffic, there was no way on God's green earth I was subjecting myself to that torture.

I was able to "see Noah off" (meaning he was wheeled in to me in his incubator) with the team that brought him to CHAD. It was 5am, I had finally dozed off to sleep, and suddenly the awful hospital LED lights kicked on and there he was. The team of people that took him was awesome, something I knew even though I had only known them for about 30 seconds. I don't remember what I felt, but I remember not wanting to cry in front of these strangers but also feeling weird that I wasn't crying (I should be, right?).

I stayed another night in the hospital attached to the breast pump to get some precious colostrum (the liquid gold that babies need right after birth before your milk comes in). The first few go arounds were successful, then my supply of it seemed to disappear. This is perfectly normal and okay since a baby's stomach is so tiny, but seeing so little of that liquid gold made me nervous. All of the nurses and lactation consultants told me it was fine that I was pumping every two hours and not getting anything. I still felt shitty.

The weirdest thing for me was that I didn't feel weird without Noah. It felt weird to not be pregnant, it felt weird to be in the hospital, but I didn't feel like he was missing from me. I think it's because we didn't get a chance to bond like we would have in a more "normal" birth experience. That being said, I've read countless tales of parents that don't feel immediately bonded to their baby. It takes time - you have to learn each other.

I left the hospital still barely able to walk. I had lost a lot of blood, I had stitches in places you don't want stitches - in short, I was still kind of a wreck. We immediately went from my hospital to CHAD with a stop for my narcotic painkillers at the pharmacy. I had a lot of anxiety when we got the hospital. I remember sitting in the sun in my wheelchair while Adam parked the car and got our belongings, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Adam and my mom had gone back and forth between the two hospitals already and knew the deal with the NICU. My doctor had warned me what it would be like to see him in there, and that I might have a meltdown.

To back up, realizing you're not going home right away comes with a whole host of other logistics to figure out. How would we get clean clothes? Where will we stay? How can we take care of him and of me? What do we have to do for him? What does he need from us? Where will we eat? Can Adam eat there (for those that don't know, he's allergic to 13 different foods)?

Noah's bed on the "critical" side

I hope you've never been to a NICU, but if you have you know that most of the babies are very small and very sick. Noah outweighed most of the babies by 6-7 pounds. I saw baby feet that were as big as half my pinkie finger. He was clearly on the healthier end of the spectrum (just the fact that he was a full-term baby put him way ahead of the rest), but when we arrived he was still on the "critical" side of the nursery. It was like entering a space station. There's crazy machines, wires, beeping, hustle and bustle, lights, etc. I have pretty much no experience with newborns, so not only did I have to learn how to hold him but I had to do so with him being hooked up to a bajillion different wires. I had to learn how to breastfeed him basically out in the open with a thin curtain, beeping machines, and the watchful eye of his nurse. We had a lot of anxiety about breastfeeding - I wanted to be good at it but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and as nice as his nurses were (I can't say enough how awesome they were), it was a little stressful to have them watch me try to figure out something so intimate and so NOT easy. Breastfeeding is portrayed as natural and beautiful and easy - trust me, it's not always that way, especially in the beginning.

Holding him for the first tune

We were transferred over to the non-critical side the same day, which was great. It was a bit more calm, the lights were dimmer, we had a little more privacy. We were lucky to have the one bedspace that had a pull-out couch, meaning we could stay there overnight with him. It was great but it came with its own set of challenges. A "bedspace" is not a room. It's his little tiny bed, a small sink, a tiny dresser, an uncomfortable couch that pulls out to an uncomfortable sleeper, and a curtain. Saying this makes me feel ungrateful because we were so fortunate to be able to stay there, be with him for everything, breastfeed on demand, etc., but it was a less than ideal way to recover from birth and try to bond with this little stranger.

Our bedspace

I still couldn't really use the bathroom comfortably on my own when we got there, and the closest family bathroom was on the first floor (we were on the 5th). Going to pee (or worse, # 2) after birth isn't simply getting up and walking to the bathroom to do your business... especially when the bathroom isn't yours. There was a whole baggy of things I had to bring with me, I was still in a wheelchair because of the physical recovery and being on narcotics, and we had to boogie 4 flights down to the family bathroom. Eventually I started to walk more confidently on my own, but I still had to go through three security doors to a public restroom on our floor. Then there's the dreaded, much feared "first poop after birth", which for me took place, again, in a crappy hospital public restroom. Dartmouth-Hitchcock is an amazing hospital with incredible resources for patients and families, but this bathroom wasn't one of them. Your first poop after birth is scarier than birth itself. I often found myself thinking, "eh, it's okay, I'll just never poop again."

Having a baby in the NICU is tough for all family members, but I was also dealing with a serious roller coaster of hormones. I was tired, I was weak, I was attempting to take care of this little stranger that I loved but was also so foreign and attached to beeping things, I was trying to keep it together for myself and for Adam. Our first morning we went down to breakfast and I just sobbed in the hospital cafeteria (not uncommon of an event after birth because of those pesky hormonal changes, it just usually doesn't take place in public).

On the flipside, it was great to have a team of nurses with us in those first few days. They exclusively focused on Noah, but they were able to reassure us that everything was okay. We got to talk to them and be humans. They found us a spare room that we could shower in. They could watch him while we went and got our three meals a day. We also had a lactation consultant visit, and I felt so much  more confident about breastfeeding after she helped us. Don't get me wrong, breastfeeding is still a roller coaster, but I at least left the hospital with some sense of what I was doing.

As with the stolen phrase in my post about Noah's birth, his stay in the NICU felt like the longest shortest time. 5 days is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it was painfully long for us. I can't imagine having a baby there for weeks, months even, as some people do. They started talking about a discharge date and I made sure to not get my hopes up in case he did need to stay longer. At this point he was off his assisted oxygen and the only thing we were waiting on was to finish out a course of antibiotics. A marker in his blood that indicates infection had been very high, and they were going to re-test that after 5 days. If it was still high he would need to stay another two days. He would be re-tested on Thursday at 11pm, meaning we would leave on Friday morning. Thursday morning came and the doctor's made their rounds. The doctor decided to test him at noon, because if that marker was going down it wouldn't make much difference if it was at noon or 11pm. We waited anxiously and packed up our things *just in case*. The results were good, we thanked the doctor, pulled the curtain that separated our tiny couch-bed from the nurses station, hugged each other, and cried.

Finally untethered, we were able to put him in his "take-home" outfit - another learning experience... how do you a dress a newborn? It seems like you would just rip their head off with the slightest movement so how the hell do you get a onesie on? It's not that hard, it turns out, but Noah HATED it. The nurses said it was nice to hear a baby scream so loudly, which was a heartbreaking complement. We busted him out of there 5 days after he arrived and brought him home to start the next step in our adventure - "We're home with a newborn... now what?" More on that later ;)