Giving birth is hard. No matter how you do it. Giving birth to a premature baby is even harder.
For me it was as if my body had failed me and my baby. I was able, with medical intervention to keep him in for 3 more days after my water broke. Enough for him to receive steroids to help his lungs mature before he came out.
He was whisked away from my husband and I. I heard him cry, his Apgar scores called out and then he was moving past me in an incubator.
He was so small the newborn diaper looked huge on him. They wheeled me to see him in the NICU and then to my room.
I was a mom, but I didn’t feel like one.
My baby wasn’t with me and as soon as I could I went to see him in the wheelchair. I wanted to cry seeing him hooked up to the machines, tube everywhere. The beeps of the machines a sad lullaby.
I would visit as much as I could during my stay and then it was time for me to leave.
But my baby had to stay.
I came every day. Each day he got stronger and bigger. And each day my heart filled more with love and hope. Hope that he would be OK, hope that he would come home. Hope that his early birth wasn’t my fault.
It went on for six weeks, but he was able to come home before Mother’s day, still six weeks before his due date. And finally, my baby was by my side
His birth story was nothing like I had planned. It was everything I didn’t think would happen. And more. Yet we both survived, and I am grateful.
I see his strength. I see his resilience. I see his determination to do things his own way as he tells me. And as he turns four this year. I am thankful that he made me his mom.
Has something you planned went in a completely different direction? How did you handle it?
Does it still affect you?
Looking forward to connecting with you,
Megan
It feels to me like birth plans are placebos for mothers. I never had a delivery go to plan. I’m too glad you have this precious one! My oldest is an unusual person. It took me years to understand who he was, to see the beautiful strengths in his uniqueness. We taught him to rely on those strengths. Someone recently told him that he had problems. He’d never heard it that way before and it confused him. He came to me to tell me he’d discovered this. I corrected him and explained that he thinks differently, but i people are too eager to put the wrong label on it. As a parent himself, he’s now seeing how hard that can be to sort out. Raising children was much harder than I ever imagined, but much more rewarding. They become such a vital part of our lives!
This is so true. Kids can teach us so much. I’m ready for the time when different no longer means bad or wrong, it’s just different.