I Don't Want to Visit You in the NICU.

Let me be very clear: the important part of that title is the "in the NICU" part.

It's not the "You" part and it never will be.

This is something both Hunter and I have said to each other when we are feeling burnt out...which, after three weeks of this so far, is often.

We don't want to go to the NICU to see you. We just want to see you.

We don't want to get in the car again today. We just want to wake up next to your bassinet and pick you up.

We don't want to make sure we packed all the pump parts, packed the milk bag, and grabbed our personal belongings. We want to be surrounded by the convenience of our home.

We don't want to tell the same security guard where we are going yet again. We want to wander into any room you are in and greet you without permission.

We don't want to flash our wristbands to the nurse's station. We want to move about without being tracked.

We don't want to knock on the nursery door and wait for someone to meet us. We want family to knock on OUR door and wait to meet YOU.

We don't want to go through all the polite motions of talking to whoever is on shift before interacting with you. We want to spend all our energy on spending time with you.

We don't want to explain to someone new that we are more than comfortable with your care routine and we have it handled. We just want to get down to business on our job.

We don't want to be checked in on every ten minutes while we hold you. We just want to be with you and no one else.

We don't want someone to "check our work" every time we put you back. We just want to feel like we are your parents and in charge of your care.

We don't want to hear the conversations and activity around us. We just want the room to be empty and still.

We don't want people to hear us talking to you or singing to you or even just being silent with you behind the privacy curtain. We want to feel truly alone with you.

Hunter and I both can feel apprehension and anxiety around preparing to come see you. We may feel it right up until the moment that we lay eyes on you and start your cares. We feel it simply because we know that coming to see you in the NICU is a huge drain on our resources. And it's never you draining us. You're the best reward ever for the effort. You make up for whatever we had to do every single time no matter what the day has in store.

It drives me absolutely up the wall that we don't get to care for you 24/7. It can sound pretty petulant and ungrateful to not want to politely deal with nurses and staff doing their jobs while you are in the NICU, but I don't care. It's how I feel. It's how it feels to have to give over the vast majority of your care to someone else when all we ever wanted was to get completely lost in the magical, overwhelming earliest days of having a fresh newborn at home together.

This is grief.

There are so many little experiences lost that we will grieve as we realize them and let them have their space to breathe. One of those things is that our newborn experience is hot garbage and not at all like we dreamed.

There, I said it. Hot garbage.

Sometimes I can identify what part of grief I'm going through as we experience this moment-to-moment. Often it's sadness, anger, and denial. Sometimes I can accept it all for a little bit and it feels like a welcome reprieve. Whatever the feeling, I find that I am constantly reminding myself that even if it's an "ugly" feeling, they're all normal and they need their space to just be. So here it is, taking up space in my head and heart and just being.

-NICU Mama Chloe