The Moment I Became a NICU Mom
It wasn’t at that first moment of separation that I realized what it would be like to have a child in the NICU. It was later, after my nurse settled me into my bed, made sure I was comfortable, and left me alone to sleep. It was when I heard another baby-a presumably healthy, chubby thighed, full term newborn-crying in the room next door to me. I imagined his mother, sleeping an arm’s length away from his bassinette, waking, immediately ready and able to meet her child’s needs. Maybe she was pulling him close to nurse, or carefully mixing a bottle of formula, or maybe she was simply holding him, sitting in the darkness of her room, touching his plump cheeks and wispy thin hair and marveling at the fact that he was here, with her, in her arms.
My child was a floor away from me, behind locked doors, alone, on the first night of his life. If he was crying in hunger, I wouldn’t know it
