Shell Shock

It's inevitable. You see someone that looks like you every day for two months, you end up talking. I got into a long conversation the other day with M, one of the other NICU moms. Her son was born two weeks after Alex, but two weeks more premature. I noticed something about M that I had not seen in myself, though it must have been there up until recently- the look of shell shock. The expression on her face did not once vary from that of bewilderment, even when she laughed, even when she listened intently to my end of the conversation. It remained a countenance of "am I dreaming all of this or did my life really just suddenly fall apart?"

The New York Times ran a piece this week about NICU parents suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, suggesting that the incessant barrage of bad news coupled  with the incessant bling of alarms brings about similar trauma in parents who go through what we've been through as does war in a soldier. You see tiny kids almost die all the time. In our case, you see your own kid die. If you are lucky enough to get out alive, you don't easily shake the memories.

It's hard to not learn about the other patients in the NICU. With ten babies or more lined up just feet apart in a big room, you hear most everything, hushed voices be damned. We see newer parents go through that we've been through with Alex, overhearing the same medical terms we had to go home and Google in order to fully understand: bradycardia, billirubin levels, spinal tap, CBC counts, ventrical bleeds, and  so on. Sometimes, we hear them deliver really bad news and, from the corner of our eyes, watch parents grapple with things so far beyond their control, it feels like they just assumed somebody else's life. Meningitis. Cerebral Palsy. Surgery.

Life really isn't fair and the NICU is a constant reminder of this truth. You do everything right and everything can still end up completely wrong. You have no control. As one grandmother said in attempt to sooth her daughter, the mother of a 3 lb boy who was having seizures, "We'll deal with the hand we are dealt."

Little Man

I'm in love with my son. I know it's the makings of a Greek tragedy, that someday, he will betray my love by being insensitive to all that I have done for him. He'll stomp on my feelings the way that children do. He'll ignore me. He'll try to get away from me and be his own person. One day, he'll fall in love with somebody else. But for now, I am mad about him and I love it. He's undeniably handsome and when he throws a fit, he's all the more charming. Nothing makes me happier than to hear him scream out his dissatisfaction or sob because his perfect little world is somehow lacking. I guess that this is how every parent feels, my own included. I didn't know.

Alex is an astounding 4lbs 2oz today. I stopped by the Baby Gap and looked at normal baby sized clothes- not with jealousy or sadness, but with excitement. It may sound morbid to say that I had avoided buying anything for him that suggested a future because, let's face it, the odds were stacked against him. But, now I can look forward to waxing nostalgic about how tiny he used to be as I purchase size 3-6 months for him. One day, when he becomes a parent, I hope he will appreciate what this meant to me. 

Transitions

Alex has graduated to the "transitional" nursery, the quiet place where babies go to grow when they are no longer critical. He's made tremendous progress in the past two weeks, so much so that it's hard to believe that he was once the purplish amphibian of June 20th. We can now do the things that babies and parents do, things most parents take for granted. We bottle feed him, hold him whenever we want, change his clothes...

So, I am spending a lot more time at the hospital in preparation for his homecoming (perhaps within the next two weeks!). In a normal pregnancy, the baby comes out and the family is united within a couple of hours. Baby comes home with the parents. Life continues on. With Alex, life has been suspended. The past two months have seemed like one never-ending dream in which I can't tell if what is happening is real or imagined. 

We have refused to let ourselves consider what life will be like when he is home and we don't need to go to the hospital every day to visit him. Now, I am starting to think about what that will be like and, I have to admit, I'm more than a little nervous. He still seems so delicate. What if I hold him wrong? What if I don't understand his cues? Will we feed him enough or change him enough? Someone else has been doing this every three hours for the past 9 weeks. Are we up for it?

I had envisioned toting Alex around with me everywhere all the time when we got him home. We would take naps together, go for long walks together. We would finally be free to be mother and son and I could finally make up for all the time that I have not been able to hold him. But, it probably won't be like this. He's likely to come home with an apnea monitor, the bane of so many parents of premature infants. It's a small device that hooks up to your baby and sounds an alarm whenever baby seems to stop breathing or his heart rate slows down. More wires, more loud beeping. More scares.  Just when you think you are home free, think again. Life with Alex will never be "normal".

Marathon

In the story of the Battle of Marathon, a soldier runs himself to death in order to carry news from the the battlefield at Marathon to the citizens of Athens that the outnumbered Greeks have beaten the invading Persians. That's it. News of victory. And he died. So impressed are we by this one man's fatal endeavor that we repeat his race toward death millions of times a year. Why repeat an action that evidently killed the first man who tried it? Even if this fable is not historically accurate, it shows us something about what we value in humanity. We love to see other people put their own best interest aside in the pursuit of an impossible feat. It makes us feel like their is a point to all of our own suffering. The reason for trying seems to be a tautology: Suffering is useful because suffering is useful, just like the point of living is to live. We have faith because we must have faith, and so on.

Hm. There is a point, and every marathon runner has reached this point, where you are so exhausted by your own feedback loop of logic, nothing makes any sense. I have reached that place. I no longer remember why we decided to have baby. I only know that now we have one and he is in a hospital and we have to keep going with this crazy business because there is no stopping. I go to the hospital every day and watch my boy sleep and wake, get and give blood, breath and stop breathing, all the while fabricating a faith that one day, he will come home with us so we can start to be a family. I wonder, when that happens, will I see him as the marathon or as the person who ran it?

3 pounds

It's hard to believe that Alex was born six weeks ago and is 33 weeks post-conception today. Born at 2lbs 4oz, he's made tremendous progress, now clocking in at a whopping 3 lbs 1 oz and outgrowing the micro-preemie clothes I bought for him. We're hoping this week he can make two huge strides: getting off the nasal canulla that helps to keep air flowing when his premature nervous system forgets to make him breath, and to try to feed him with a bottle (he is currently fed through a feeding tube). I can't be that disappointed if he doesn't succeed at either goal, since he's not supposed to be born for another seven weeks.

There's been a lot that I've wanted to write about lately. Foremost is that I am feeling weary of this limbo. Though much of the stress of becoming a NICU parent has dissipated as Alex becomes more stable, another stress is taking its place. I feel like I should get a job, do something with my time to help out our bank account. But, in five weeks or so, I'll suddenly be the full-time caretaker of a baby I have watched grow inside a plexi-glass box like some kind of TV show. I often feel that I am not Alex's mother, but just a visitor in his complete hospital world. The excitement of seeing him evolve has started to take on a perverse  hue. With the nurse asking "Do you want to take him out for awhile?" followed by "We need to put him back in now," Alex is starting to seem more like a kitten in a pet store than my son.

Beneath the obvious identity confusion, I can sense a real crisis. I am 35, I just closed up my business in order to raise twins that did not materialize, and I need to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Unanimously, people will respond with, "Raising you son." Duh. Of course raising Alex will be the focus of my life . But, I don't cease to be a three dimensional person with my own needs and aspirations simply because I have a child. In fact, failing to pursue my own goals will result in a total lack of respect from my son as he grows up feeling that his mom could have been something, but chose not to. Being a person your kid can respect is more important than telling him what's right and wrong.