WHEN YOUR BABY IS BORN PREMATURE AND NOTHING IS AS YOU EXPECTED

Having a premature baby is one of the toughest experiences in a couple's life, whether it is the first baby or not, because it is something that nobody expects and what nobody prepares you for.

From the positive of the test, the parents are made to the idea that the pregnancy will last more or less nine months, that the delivery will happen at the end of that term and that in one or two days, if the delivery has been in the hospital, They can return home no longer as a couple, but finally as a family.

You don't control anything about your birth

The first blow you take is the surprise, nothing positive, that your baby is going to have to be born already, early. You are not ready for it yet, it is not the time! But there you are, dead of fear watching as all the expectations that you had made disappear.

That you had written a birth plan to give birth to a full-term baby and you don't even take it out… There it stays, in the bag, because you no longer feel like it or the strength to ask for anything like that, but simply that everything goes well .

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You give absolute control of childbirth to professionals because you just want to hug your baby and that everything happens, which is the most important thing without a doubt, but it is still a kind of loss.

They are taking it away…

Once the baby is born you cannot do what you had read so much that you could do: skin to skin. That of leaving it on your chest and thanking the entire world that you finally have it there; Smell his head, caress his back, feel his warmth and notice how after an exhausting birth you are exultant, full of energy and love for your baby, wishing to enjoy every second with him.

But no. They are taking it away. Because it weighs a little and because it is premature. Their health depends on their acting with greater or lesser haste and that "Where she is best with her mother" is no longer true, not at that moment. Again, you know what is best for the baby, but it is still another loss.

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When you see it, so fragile, with those wires ...

Minutes may pass, or it may take hours until you see it, depending on the delivery. Because if he has been a C-section, it will take many hours until you can get up and go to 'neonates' to be with him. You will only have the photos that your partner brings on the mobile, and there you will see your baby, little boy, so fragile, with those cables, with the probe that enters through his nose. Love and fear intermingled; the desire to take it and the fear of doing it.

And so the moment comes when you finally see him before you, there in the incubator, and you realize that he is your son but you are not free to take care of him like the rest of mothers, if they want they take it, if they want they leave it in the crib again, if they want it they have it constantly in their chest, hugged ... and they are 24 hours together if necessary, even both in bed.

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You are not in your bed, you are on a hospital sofa in your cubicle of the neonatal unit, where the smallest and sickest fight to get ahead, and you just want to get good news, that the weight goes up, that evolves well and that you can leave there as soon as possible, although the fear is tremendous, because the responsibility seems much greater.

The kangaroo method helps a lot. It helps the baby get fat, evolve better, be calmer. And it helps the mother and father to reconcile, not even a little, with the situation. You cannot choose what you are living, it was not your choice, but since it has happened, being able to have it close to the body seems the best start to know that you will always take care of him, that nothing will separate you anymore.

When the night Comes

Then the night comes and mom goes to the maternity facility, where she continues to recover from childbirth or caesarean section in the absence of her baby. Your baby, the one who is so close but at the same time is so far away. And sometimes you cry ... Miriam was crying, when Aran was born early. Because our son was on another floor and she was in her room, trying to sleep while listening to other babies with their mothers. Trying to sleep knowing that no baby would wake her with her twins, asking for a tit.

"But what happens to you, if your baby is evolving well?" Asks the family. “Well, this is not at all what we expected. Because I try to do my best, but everything is beyond my control. How to be a mother, how to do it if I can't do anything?

Of course, he understands that it must be that way, and of course he is happy because his baby is alive and seems to be getting better, but we don't start from the basis that he expected something bad to happen, but quite the opposite. It is stressful and out of the ordinary situation. No one expects to receive a baby who brings so much life with him and has to fight to keep her.

When you are discharged

And so the terrible day comes when you are discharged. Miriam thanked him, because we also had Jon and she felt that she was no longer the mother of one, nor the mother of the other. "At least that way I can be with Jon, my boy ... at least he'll know I'm still there for him." Actually it was not so many hours that were together, because we had to continue breastfeeding Aran, but for Jon it was a little more normal, within the abnormal situation, that mom was at home at night and slept with him again.

But when there is no older brother, that day is terrible. Terrible because mom returns home and is no longer pregnant, and also does not enter through the door with her baby, as he had imagined so many times. It is another loss, another blow, another reason why parents of premature babies need support.

What if they put schedules in the NICU?

This depends a lot on each hospital, but when Aran was born, for a matter of doing things with a little order, there were schedules to be with the babies. Every three hours parents could come in to feed their baby and stay as long as it took (one or two hours), then leave and return in the third hour.

We said that breastfeeding should be on demand, but they insisted that this way she would have more time to produce milk, and that we should not worry because after the intake we could give her bottles of artificial milk so that she could drink about 60 ml in total.

I have gone to our case, and I suppose that what I explain ceases to be representative, but I explain it as a sign of what often happens: the wishes of the parents, even the recommendations, can be left in the background by the protocols of each unit and because in such a situation the last thing you want is to end up arguing with anyone.

When Miriam was taken milk between shots to try to make the post-breastfeeding supplement out of her milk they became very angry and accused her of bringing the milk Aran had to suck in a canister: “And now, what milk are you going to give?". "The chest," he replied. “How, if you took it out? Now you won't have anything. ” "But if breast milk doesn't end, it keeps coming out ..." “And if it keeps coming out, why have you stopped taking it out? Why haven't you kept getting more and more? And ended up crying ... they made her cry. Because they were right or wrong, they didn't, they could have told him things in many ways, but not in that way. She was just a mother trying to do her best for her baby.

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The day you go home

And so the baby's struggle continues, and that of the parents, totally misplaced, to get ahead of the situation. Sometimes Dad's father is running out And get back to work. She spends all day in the hospital until he arrives, at home alone at night while he is going to take the shots of extracted milk that she does not give while she sleeps. And so the two of them continuing with their lives in a situation as complex as having your baby admitted to the hospital requiring time, affection, food from mom almost at all times (or every three according to protocol) and the hope of being able to get out of there as soon as possible.

And I do not talk about whether you have to do any operation on the baby, with the uncertainty that this entails, or if you have to be constantly aware of the saturator, in case you do apnea and you have to give caffeine to help you, or so many other things that can happen , and that make parents have to learn to be, in a way, "nurses" of the baby, to be able to continue taking care of him when he gets home. Not what they expected, sure.

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So the day you go home is not the end, but the beginning of another situation that not everyone understands. You're home but visits cannot come (or they can hardly receive visitors), so you have to go telling everyone, eager to come see you, that you will let them know, in what is still another type of confinement. Of course, for a child that is done and much more, whatever it takes, but it is another situation totally different from what the parents expected. And the family too, of course, can hardly go see you.

And what else, if the baby is fine in the end?

Well, if the baby is fine in the end, it's clear: that's the important thing. But that does not mean that parents feel in many moments lost, overwhelmed, not having control of the situation, and scared, because the uncertainty related to care is greater than with a full-term baby.

In the end, what I want to contribute with this entry is a bit of reality to those parents who don't know what it is to have a premature baby, and support to those who live or have lived. So that they know that they are not the only ones who have felt this way, and so that others know how they can get to feel and what is the support they may need.

Courage dad; encouragement mom: you are as brave as your baby.