Diary of a Premature Mom: ‘Sorry Girl I Couldn’t Protect You’

September 10, 2020

I know exactly what to do. It doesn’t matter that it’s five weeks early. It doesn’t matter that it’s only been barely eight hours since my waters broke. It doesn’t matter that the room is filled with doctors and nurses. There is only one thing that matters in my body and that is that I will push. So that’s what I do.

With a beautiful result. After just under twenty minutes I suddenly have my daughter in my arms. For a moment everything is exactly as it should be. I hold M. close to my heart and her father’s arms wrap around us.

Unfortunately, that happiness does not last very long. Gradually M. has more and more trouble keeping her oxygen level. So while I’m getting stitched up, the pediatrician checks her out and decides she needs to go into an incubator. So M. and papa leave for the children’s ward and, less than thirty minutes after my birth, I am suddenly alone in the room. Without my baby.

It will be a few hours before I can see her. With bed and all I am wheeled into the incubator room. It’s a room full of beeps and buzzes and the smell of rubbing alcohol. M. has an oxygen mask over her nose that is held in place with a cap, but which closes her eyes. The wire of a probe comes out of her mouth and on her torso are three stickers that keep track of her heartbeat and breathing with even more wires. And there is also a sticker on her foot, which monitors her oxygen level.

All wires and cords and devices to give her the start she should have gotten in my stomach.

I can hold her hand through a hatch in the incubator and then the tears come. Sorry girl I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry you’re lying here now and not safe in my tummy. Sorry for everything. Sorry.

September 11, 2020

When M. is 24 hours old, I can hold her again for the first time. Yesterday we already tried, but then all kinds of alarms went off. It turned out to be too heavy for her. Her glass house was safer than my embrace.

Now we’ll try again, but not before I’ve been spoken to sternly. We are only allowed to cuddle (kangaroo) when I feel well enough to sit with her for at least 45 minutes – only then do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. I nod dutifully to everyone and wonder if they don’t realize I want to stay here forever if it means I can finally hold her.

Cables are put aside and I pull my dress down so she can lie on my bare skin. One hand grips her bottom – just under 2300 grams – and with the other I gently stroke the down hairs on her back. All values ​​stabilize as we look at each other. A very small pointed tongue tries to push her probe out of her mouth. It’s the most perfect little tongue I’ve ever seen.

We cuddle until I’m broken, and leave for the room in the children’s ward where we are now. It is the smallest room there is (two beds and a children’s toilet), but also only a short wheelchair ride away from the incubator. So perfect.

In the room we cry out our tension for the first time. This world is so strange and everything is so grand. I am so happy with our daughter and so unbelievably afraid of losing her. So as soon as it’s six o’clock, I stop crying and put the pump on my breasts. Making milk takes an incredible amount of energy, but it’s all I can do for M.

And it seems to help. At ten o’clock in the evening, when I have just finished playing another round of cash cows, my partner returns with good news. M. is off oxygen. On his phone, I cry admiring the photos of her beautiful mask-free face. I’m too devastated to go and admire her myself.

September 13, 2020

It’s six in the morning when the door opens and a pair of white coats wake us up. I almost jump out of bed, ready to do whatever I have to to help M. And it turns out to be bad news indeed. M. has too many ‘incidents’: moments when the oxygen level in her body along with her heart rate drop too far. In other words, breathing independently is not possible, so the oxygen has to be added again.

Two minutes later we are crying next to her incubator. It’s terrible to see how hard she has to fight for oxygen. And though I don’t pronounce it, and though I know it’s not true, it feels like it’s because of the failure of my body. So after a while I drive back to the room to do what my body can do: make breast milk.

More news will follow that day. Her blood shows that her liver is not doing well enough and she is against jaundice. Everyone reminds us that this is normal. That it could be much worse. But I find that hard to believe when I look at our little bumblebee under the blue lamp at night, the oxygen mask supplemented with cloth sunglasses to protect her eyes. She has the hiccups. Little beeps escape from her diaphragm and I sob softly.

The following days pass in a rush of hope and guilt that I try to suppress with religiously pumping every three hours and for much longer than my recovering body can actually hug kangaroo. We learn to distinguish the different beeps, – from ‘Please pay attention’ to ‘ALARM’: they all come up. After a while we know the schedules of the nursing staff and I become convinced that the odorless oxygen really does have its own smell when it flows out of your baby’s mask.

But as terrible as this situation is, there are also more and more beautiful moments. M. gently squeezing my finger, the values ​​that stabilize when she’s with one of us, and snacking on the Marsjes that I get during nightly pumping sessions.

September 17, 2020

M. is now off the extra oxygen for 24 hours so we can start our breastfeeding adventure. I sit in a comfortable blue chair and pull down my bra, while my partner, two sisters and a lactation consultant watch. My body has long since passed the shame and there is already a drop of milk on my nipple. So I gently move M.’s head towards it. She sticks out her pointy tongue and opens her eyes surprised when she tastes the milk.

But she’s too small to understand that she has to latch on and suck, so she’s just delighted to stick out her tongue until the effort becomes too much and she falls asleep. People around me speak of a resounding success. I don’t dare to trust it yet, but tell myself: her pace is the right pace.

September 18, 2020

So far we have been lucky. We’ve been occupying the smallest children’s room for a week. But after today the room for day admissions is needed and so we have to go home. Understandable, but not really bearable, so heavy.

So at the end of the afternoon I kiss M.’s hand, sit on a wooden wheelchair and get an empty Maxi-Cosi on my lap. We drive down, call a taxi and get in. People move past us as if nothing is wrong. The taxi driver listens to the radio as if music is something you can listen to without crushing you. And I cling to that empty Maxi-Cosi.

At home I walk up the stairs, but I can’t go halfway. I can’t bear the idea of ​​seeing an empty box in the living room, so we stand on the stairs crying together.

Step by step, step by step, we finally arrive at our house. I have no idea how to do this. Sit at the kitchen table. Food. Reading the cards of everyone who cares about us and tries to instill some peace in our hearts. How do I walk up the next stairs where her empty bed is? How do I lie in my own bed? How do I call the hospital to ask if my baby is still okay?

I close my eyes and start counting breaths until my body turns off the light.

September 28, 2020

I don’t think I’ll ever look at people the same way in rush hour. Every morning we drive to our daughter and I wonder: how many people are in this boat with us?

It’s a strange rhythm, but you get used to it. Even if I have to leave my heart in the hospital every night to go to sleep at home. Sometimes I almost forget that there will come a day when we can go home.

And sometimes there is a day when everything feels closer again. Like during her first bath, or the day she leaves the incubator for good. For the first time we see our daughter with clothes on. We have to turn the size 44 sleeves and legs twice to make it fit and are completely happy.

Today is daddy’s birthday. I asked the nurses to hang a garland above M.’s crib and they made a booklet with pictures of her first weeks. So it feels a little bit like a party, but the best gift follows later. The rooming-in starts from today. My partner and I can move to the hospital again and if everything continues to go well, the three of us will soon be able to go home.

In the evening we lie in two hospital beds with M’s crib in between. We look at each other completely happy and then the monitor goes off. The oxygen drops and immediately there is the fear of losing M. again. But then everything stabilizes.

If this repeats itself a few times, we will call a nurse. There appears to be nothing wrong. Our daughter has adopted the wobbly feet of both her parents, which means that the oxygen measurement is not correct. The beeps continue to cause stress, but we now also know: our girl looks like us!

October 9, 2020

In the hospital, the days are long, yet they mix into a great mush of experiences. Sometimes we’re wrecked because huge alarms go off every hour for no reason. And sometimes we finally sit on our pink cloud. Then the three of us lie in a bed watching the anniversary season of Wie is de Mol or we dance around softly while we wait for our breakfast.

On a whiteboard we keep track of everything that is measured: her weight, how much she has drunk herself and what is in each diaper. We learn to read the monitor and the nurses have to do less and less for us. We celebrate when M. breaks the three kilo barrier and we keep our mouths shut when the nurses start hinting that we can go home after the weekend. We dare not tempt the gods.

October 12, 2020

Then it’s Monday. M. drinks almost half of her feeds herself and the upward trend is enormous. My partner gains enough confidence to drive home a few bags of clothes.

And then, just as I’m pumping, the pediatrician comes in. I pretend it’s the most natural thing in the world for a relatively strange man to find me in my cash cow position, because I don’t want to wait any longer for news. He keeps it short. We can all go home!

Our favorite nurse arrives with a garbage bag full of frozen milk – the result of pumping every three hours for over a month. We write a sweet message to all the heroes of the children’s department and walk downstairs. I no longer need a wheelchair, especially now that our strong girl is hanging from my arms in her Maxi-Cosi.

I recoil to the music in the taxi and keep looking sideways at my little great love lying next to me. At home we fly up the stairs and walk into a decorated living room. Are there those tears again? But that does not matter. We are home.

To raise awareness about preterm birth, World Premature Day takes place every hair on November 17. You can read more about it here.