Thirty Weeks

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I was 30 weeks pregnant when my daughter came barreling into the world.  I was not ready to be a mother yet.  I realize that sounds crazy since I was due to become one in a little over 2 more months.  My body and baby had other plans; plans that sent us on a long hard road of preterm labor, emergency surgery, and a very long hospital stay for the new little person in our life.

When I was pregant with Alexandra we planned to have an all natural birthing center labor and delivery experience.  When I went into labor 10 weeks early that plan was taken off the table.  After a full day of unnoticed contractions turned into something real we rushed to the nearest hospital.  I was serviced by a L&D staff that had no idea who I was, and I them.  It was too late to stop it they said, I should have come in earlier they said, we have to deliver this baby now they said, you have to have a c-section....

It's all a haze.  There was talk of survival rates and surgery prep.  There was me, paralized from the waist down, on a table in the OR.  There was vomit and tears and begging to be put under.  There was a crying baby being pulled from my body.  

She cried!  She was strong and bigger than expected.  There was hope.  There was also a lot of fear.  My baby, who I had barely just met was being whisked off to another hospital while I was staying put.  I wasn't feeling at all like a mother.  I was only feeling "no longer pregnant".

It would be another 4 days before I was able to properly meet my daughter.  Those days alone in the hospital were the hardest of my life.  They were also surreal.  I had come to the ER assuming labor would be stopped and I would be sent on my merry way.  Instead I was operated on and then basically left alone.  I wanted so badly to bond with my baby.  I felt sick for her.  She had been ripped out of me and then away.  She was with strangers when she should still be cozy inside of me.  She was a NICU baby, and that she would stay for the next 5 weeks.

I did what I could to be motherly.  I took those days alone to heal and to pump.  I pumped day and night.  I pumped until it felt like my nipples would fall off.  No milk would come, but I pumped anyway.  It was the last thing I had and I wasn't going to fail this part too.  That Friday I was discharged from my hospital and on my way to my daughter's.  I had mere millileters of breastmilk in my possession, but my goodness she was going to get what I had to give.  

When I met her the whole world fell away.  When they placed her in my arms, so teeny...so fragile, the NICU noises mutted.  The beeping of the machines, the breathing of the ventilators, the smells of the hospital.....it all went away because I had fallen in love.  I wasn't just "no longer pregnant" I really was a mother.  

The reality of being a NICU mom took some getting used to.  The pain of leaving her every night, the struggle to pump milk from my body to feed to her, the driving back and forth and back and forth to the hospital.  It was a hard 5 weeks.  Though, I honestly felt most at ease in the NICU...because when I went home I was alone.  I was left to my own devices and to my own scary mind.  The fear that something would happen while I was away stopped me in my tracks some nights.  The struggle to rest and heal and nest without her with me was the hardest thing I had to deal with.  

In some ways, however, it was easier.  I could sleep.  I could eat.  I could shower and clean and cook and all those things you take for granted.  I did those alone without the cries of a newborn.  I also had 5 weeks of training by the amazing nurses and doctors.  When the time came to bring our lovely little girl home we were well equiped. It was 5 weeks before her due date, but I can honestly say I was