A Portrayal Of Modern Motherhood: NICU Edition

"How does it feel to be a mother?"

This pregnancy has brought me many questions to ponder. And now that my children are living on "the outside" I've got new questions to address. 

Answering the above question always feels so strange. While I was pregnant I assumed that after hours of painful labor my first child would emerge from it's quiet cocoon and our eyes would meet and that would be it. I would be a mother. And then, because I have twins, I would get to repeat the experience within the next hour. I would be a mother twice over. It would be such a powerful experience, one that would live on in my memory for all time.

Of course, life had a different plan. 

After living in the hospital for a week, my preeclampsia had progressed to the point where it was no longer safe for me to stay pregnant.  Doctors decided that, at 33 weeks and 5 days gestation, October 17th, 2016 would be my children's birthday. And it was like nothing I could have ever anticipated.

First of all, baby A was not head down which meant I would need a c-section. This didn't really bother me. A lot of people have c-sections. I wasn't really excited about the longer recovery time compared to a vaginal birth, but I knew it would be worth it to have my babies come into the world safely. I knew that since the babies were being born so early I probably wouldn't get the chance to hold them right after they were pulled out, but at least I'd get to see them before they were whisked away to the NICU. And my wife would be standing next to me so we could experience the birth of our children together. I now had a new image of childbirth in my head. 

And that's where I learned, once again, the dangers of holding on to expectations. The doctors told me that my platelets were too low for a spinal and I would have to be knocked out for the c-section. Because of my preeclampsia I would be hooked up to an IV drip with anti-seizure medicine for 24 hours after they pull the babies out, but the nurses assured me that they could wheel me over to the NICU to see the babies with the drip. Here is where it makes more sense to just write a list of how insane everything went from here.

- Because I wasn't going to be awake for the birth of my children, my wife could not be in the operating room either. She waited outside the room and was let into a side room once the babies were out so she could be the first to see them. From there she could see the wall of blue scrubs around my unconscious body for a moment before the babies were rolled out into the hallway for the rest of our family to view on their way to the NICU.

- I woke up in the PACU (Post Anesthesia Care Unit) alone except for my nurse who taught me how to use the green button which would deliver a narcotic when I felt pain. I was already hooked up to the anti-seizure meds and they were checking my blood pressure regularly to make sure I was stable before sending me up to the recovery room. 

- I wanted to look my children in their eyes before I looked between their legs. But shortly after waking up I noticed additional bracelets on my left wrist. No one told me to expect these. So of course I had to figure out what they were. When I saw that one bracelet said "Baby girl A" I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, "well, I might as well just look at the other one" which read "Baby girl B." I smiled. Though I missed their birth and still hadn't seen their faces, this was the only connection I had to my children. 

- Eventually they wheeled me back up to recovery. And this is where things get a little fuzzy for me. My girls were born at 4PM on Monday. And I cant remember if the things I'm going to write about now happened Monday night or Tuesday morning.

- At some point the pain of my incision had been eclipsed by the pain of seemingly immovable gas in my abdomen. Pushing the green button no longer provided relief so I ignored it and focused on breathing through the pain as best I could. The doctors sent me for an x-ray to make sure that there wasn't anything else strange happening in my body. I couldn't sit up or stand or walk. They had to move me to the x-ray table. But I had to help position myself. They pain was stunning. In fact this was such an amazingly painful experience, I had completely forgotten about it the next day... I think my body was trying to protect my sanity. When the doctors mentioned it at rounds I had no idea what they were talking about and must have looked very foolish when I asked for clarification.

- After the x-ray I was returned to recovery. 

- I was still on the IV drip on Tuesday. But now I started to talk strange. I wasn't making sense (apparently... all I remember was how hard it was to focus and make sense of what other people were saying.) The doctors assumed that I had mistakenly received too much of the narcotic pain killer from the magic green button. I remember my mom telling the doctors that I had only pushed the button twice in the last several hours. The doctors looked at her suspiciously and consulted the green button. To their surprise I had received significantly less pain killer than what they feel people need after major abdominal surgery. Then they checked my blood and found my hematocrit was quite low and decided to give me a blood transfusion. At this point my children were now a full day old and I still could not even sit up in bed. I had not seen them, though my family had. And they brought me pictures... A very poor substitute for the real thing. 

It's hard to feel like a mother when you don't get to see your children. And it's not just about seeing them. I wanted to touch them, hold them, smell them, hear them, watch them... I wanted to feel them again. I wanted to feel them with every sense I had. I didn't miss being pregnant, but I missed feeling my babies twitch.

After the blood transfusion I was taken off the anti-seizure medicine and wheeled back to the floor I was living at before the babies were born. My new nurse knew of me though this was the first time we met. She came in and asked me how I was and asked me how the babies were. I tried to be cool about everything that had happened, but I quickly became emotional because I still hadn't seen my girls. She was shocked to learn that I hadn't been out of bed in over a day. She was also shocked that I still had a catheter connected to my leg. I was really lucky to have this nurse. Because of the gas moving was still excruciating, but some how this woman got me up and into a wheel chair. And she wheeled me to the NICU and I finally saw my girls. They were in isolettes but I got to reach in and hold their hands.

Meeting Baby A. And you can see by the look on my face how overwhelmed I was. 

Meeting Baby B. It was hard to fit my wheelchair next to these isolettes.

The next day they let me hold Baby A!

If there is a heaven, then I think it feels like this.

After this my recovery consisted of blood pressure checks every four hours and trying lots of different dosages to keep it at a manageable level. I needed a second blood transfusion when my girls were three days old. Then the doctors thought my incision was infected, but it turned out I was allergic to some adhesive they used in the surgery which caused my incision to turn bright red and puffy... it looked like a creepy clown smile! Then my body broke out in itchy hives leading the doctors to believe I am allergic to Percocet, the pain medicine they gave me. Finally they could let me take ibuprofen (which I wasn't allowed to take until they had my blood pressure under control) and the hives started to go away. 

Slowly I learned to walk through the pain and weakness of more than a month on bed rest. Three days ago I actually stopped using a wheelchair! Now I can stand up next to my babies' cribs and change their diapers, check their temperatures and kiss their faces when ever I want to. I can even pick them up and carry them to a chair. Though that's always a scary thing because they are still hooked up to monitors and I'm afraid I will trip. But has the days have passed the number of lines and wires connected to them have decreased and it has become much easier to hold them.

I even get to hold them both at the same time now! :)

This really was the best thing ever.

And now my life is one of pumping and going to the hospital. Our girls are learning to eat with their mouths and are getting stronger and bigger every day. We keep getting closer and closer to taking them home.

So, in a couple of days I will have been a mother for three weeks... and I'm still not sure how to answer that first question. How does it feel? Over the past month my feelings have ran all over the place, I think it will we a while before I can actually process everything that has happened to me.

I'm not even sure if I feel like I AM a mother yet. Our children are cared for 24/7 by amazing NICU nurses. My life is about pumping, waiting to go to the hospital and dragging myself away when it's so late that I really should be sleeping! It's hard to find balance when you are a parent... I know this from all of my friends who are parents. But maybe finding balance is just another expectation I need to let go of. These are choppy, uncharted waters and I can't make a stormy ocean a calm ocean. But I can accept this all for what it is, what it was, and what it will be. And through that acceptance perhaps I can feel some peace...

Or maybe I'll just be a goofball and laugh my way through it all ;)