On the day we left you in the NICU...
Our son, Arthur, was born 7 weeks early at 2 lbs 10 oz due to my preeclampsia and his IUGR. I started writing soon after his birth to deal with the tremendous stress and emotional load of NICU parent life. This entry is one of the first ones I wrote.
”On the day we left you at the NICU, I spent the morning packing up our room. It didn't take much work. Hunter had done such a good job all week of keeping everything tidy and in its place. He knows it makes us both feel better to not be completely surrounded by chaos. Though I'm generally no help in preventing mess like that.
On the day we left you at the NICU, a handful of doctors, the social worker, and two nurses came into the room at rapid fire intervals to throw paperwork at us, give us discharge instructions, ask for signatures, and tell us to pack our phone chargers and shoes (three times we were told these were the most common items left behind). But they didn't need to remind us. We were search and rescue robots combing every inch of the room for evidence of our being there. I even stripped the bed because I used to be a hospital housekeeper and it just felt natural. We were so done with hospital life. We wanted so badly to be rid of it.
On the day we left you at the NICU, I cried. I cried as I washed my pump parts to pack them. I cried as I put on tennis shoes for the first time since being admitted. I cried as Hunter took our loads of items to the car and I stayed in the room alone, looking out the window and wishing he was already back. I called my mom as I cried because I didn't know what else to do with my feelings and needed someone to hear me and hold the space. That day I cried silent tears, big sobbing tears, tired tears, panicked tears. I cried tears that didn't want to be held and I cried tears that needed someone to hold them. I cried because it all felt so wrong.
On the day we left you at the NICU, we stood by your isolette, freshly discharged and answering to no one anymore. Just visitors. No one keeping track of me and my meds or my pee or my signature.
You were sleeping. Still and snug and undisturbed. I'm glad you were sleeping. I'm glad you looked perfectly at peace and content in your swaddle. Had you been at all uncomfortable, I think leaving would have been so much worse.
On the day we left you at the NICU, we cried in the hallway outside the doors to your pod. We hugged and hated everything in that moment.
We got in the car and I went quiet. I looked out the window as Hunter played an audiobook to fill the silence. I took a selfie that day just to know what the face of all of this looked like. It's a very sad face.
On the day we left you at the NICU, I walked ten steps into our house, dazed, sore shuffles, and then began to cry huge heaving sobs all over again right into my mom's chest.
Afterwards, she kept us moving in a direction. We ate food. We got reacquainted with our spaces. I assembled my new non-hospital pump and got right to it. I enjoyed how quiet it was in our house. I reveled in knowing that no one would take my blood pressure at 2am. I took a shower. Hunter tucked me into bed on the couch because our bed is too high and my c-section recovery wouldn't tolerate climbing into it and out of it yet.
That night, angry cats yowled at each other outside the living room window. My sleeping mind thought I heard you. I woke up and had to make sense of the cognitive dissonance. Hunter chased them away. My mind had been so convinced and fought to puzzle it together. Thankfully, I was also exhausted and fell back to sleep.
On the day we left you at the NICU, we left behind the only thing that mattered to us. We did the hardest thing we had ever done. Every day that we leave you at the NICU, over and over and over again, we are doing the hardest thing we have ever done. It does not get easier to leave you there. It just doesn't.
The only way I have found to manage is to take each day one at a time. Some days I can only manage thinking about an hour at a time. We both can't think about multiple days ahead of time, because it is too overwhelming to know that even then, you will still be in the NICU. “
-Chloe