The Longest 27 Days

when i went to bed on August 6th, 2011, i did so anticipating the lovely baby shower in my honor that i would attend the next day.

when i went to bed on August 6th, 2011, i did so feeling great, with not a care in the world – and certainly not thinking about meeting my babies anytime soon. after all, they weren’t due for two more months.

so, when my water broke at 4:00 in the morning on August 7th, i was completely unprepared for what would take place during the next forty-eight crazy hours.

on August 9th, after a fairly uneventful labor, Mackey was born; forty-five minutes later, Drue entered the world.

babymackeybabydrue

both babies were assessed and whisked away by teams of waiting nurses; i barely got to tell them “hello.”

suddenly, it was just me and a nurse – alone in a huge, stark white room. my husband, chris, went to be with the boys … the doctors went to deliver other babies … all the nurses went back to tend to their other patients. for the first time in seven months, i was truly alone.

no one dreams of seeing their babies for the first time in an isolette. no one dreams of holding their babies for the first time while they’re attached to oxygen, heart monitors, feeding tubes, and PICC lines. no one dreams of having to wait six hours for their first interaction with their babies; for me, those six hours might as well have been six years. at least i didn’t have to wait days, or weeks, or months … some parents do.
isolettes

if i could sum up my NICU experience in one phrase, it would be “hurry up and wait.”

hurry up and get to the hospital. wait to feed my babies.

hurry up and finish lunch. wait to change a diaper.

hurry up and scarf down some dinner. wait until bath time … the best thing for a NICU baby is to be left to sleep in their isolette. babies grow best when they are sleeping. did you know that? i didn’t … and it was SO, SO hard to leave them sleeping in their isolettes, where they had their best chance to grow and thrive, when all i wanted to do was snuggle them.

the NICU is a lonely place – and once my husband returned to work, it was even lonelier. sitting in a dark room, no iPad, no computer, no television – nothing to keep me company except the constant beep of countless monitors and the drone of the oxygen machine.

one of the hardest things about the NICU was the realization that the world was, indeed, going on without me. on one of my daily trips to QuikTrip, i remember suddenly being acutely aware of all the people going about their lives – and i was devastated. i couldn’t bear the thought that these people, these strangers, could go about their normal lives while my babies lay in the NICU.

i will forever maintain that NICU nurses are angels sent from God. to work in such a stressful environment, taking care of the tiniest babies, all the while reassuring and loving their stressed-out mommas … there was Nurse Mary who assured me time and time again that, as the boys’ mom, i know best and it was okay to make my concerns heard. there was Nurse Michelle who would secretly fill my water cup with diet Coke on particularly hard days with the boys. then there was “curly headed” Michelle, our night nurse who was so kind and loving and who made it easier to leave the boys each night … and Tess, whose bubbly personality never failed to make me smile.

no one anticipates having their baby stay in the NICU after birth. in the grand scheme of things, our twenty-seven day stint is nothing compared to what some families are forced to endure – families whose babies are there for months, perhaps even a year.

after five weeks, we took home two healthy, happy babies; today, they are two busy toddlers with absolutely zero indication that either of them were born nine weeks early.

but for me, those twenty-seven days might as well have been twenty-seven years.

(Note: This is the first post in our series dedicated to Prematurity Awareness Dayto read the other posts in this series, click here.)

Cali
I'm Cali. I'm a wife, co-parent, and mom of twin boys who are soon-to-be 6, as well as brand new step-mom to 3 young adults who are 19, 16, and 14. I was born and raised in the Northland, and I can't imagine living anywhere else...unless you were to offer me a beach house, or a villa on the coast of Italy or France. I have been a public educator for 21 years, and I currently teach middle school, which I truly believe is the very best age in all the world. I enjoy reading, cooking, and traveling, and I believe ice cream is an acceptable meal any time of the day. I drink entirely too much diet coke, and my floors are rarely clean. I joined the mommy-club later in life after an 8 year struggle with infertility. I've decided being an "old mom" is a pretty great gig.

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