(no subject)
So, our daughter ended up being born when I was only 24 weeks pregnant. She was about 4 months early. Next Wednesday will be her one-month birthday. So hard to believe. It feels like it's been months since the night she was born. But at the same time, I can't believe she's already almost a month old.
It has been a very rough few weeks, filled entirely with the details of having a premature baby and all its complications. What I know about myself and how I see the world changed so much in the short two hours between when I thought everything was okay with my pregnancy and when I suddenly became a mom. It is so hard to deal with that difference in what I know and how I perceive things now.
About two days after she was born, I almost got into an argument with a visitor I received while lying in a hospital bed recovering from my emergency C-section. Ella was hundreds of miles away, lying in her own hospital bed, an incubator with phototherapy lights on above her, a tube stuck down her throat, and about a half dozen monitors stuck in and on her undeveloped skin. My visitor informed me of a friend he had that had had a baby recently at only 3 months. I feebly tried to tell him that babies born at 22-23 weeks of gestation are at the outer limits of what modern medicine can now sustain to term and beyond. But after he insisted over and over that she was only 3 months pregnant, I gave up. I was too exhausted and overwhelmed.
I know why everyone asks when Ella is going to come home. For everyone else, it's the only thing they understand. They don't see her, struggling to take every single breath of air. Safe to grow in my womb, she would never have been forced to breath to live. Nobody that asks about when she's going home understands the obstacles that she must overcome. Born weighing less than a pound and a half, she can't maintain her body temperature for even a second outside of her incubator. I see how people only want for our happiness -- they ask when she'll be home because that day, they think, will be our day to rejoice.
But we rejoice every day. We marvel at the hour she finally comes off the ventilator and moves to the next breathing apparatus. We continue to marvel every hour she stays off the ventilator. We equally marvel when we first see her eyes open or we notice that her lanugo has been replaced by the sight of healthy, unbroken pink skin.
Her first day at home will be a day to rejoice, to be sure. But also, it will be another step of the journey. Our doctors and nurses are already preparing us to expect monitors and oxygen tanks for her transition to home. Leaving the NICU, even months down the road, will probably not mean that all her struggles will be over.
In the meantime, I'm happy to report that our little Ella Tate is already 1 lb, 13 oz. Tomorrow she will finally be at what would have been her gestational age of 28 weeks. We are so proud of her each and every day for being such a fighter. I will sit happily with the knowledge that she very well might one day grow to be a rebellious teenager, as long as I can also know that today, tomorrow, and each day in the future she will be as stubborn a fighter.
It has been a very rough few weeks, filled entirely with the details of having a premature baby and all its complications. What I know about myself and how I see the world changed so much in the short two hours between when I thought everything was okay with my pregnancy and when I suddenly became a mom. It is so hard to deal with that difference in what I know and how I perceive things now.
About two days after she was born, I almost got into an argument with a visitor I received while lying in a hospital bed recovering from my emergency C-section. Ella was hundreds of miles away, lying in her own hospital bed, an incubator with phototherapy lights on above her, a tube stuck down her throat, and about a half dozen monitors stuck in and on her undeveloped skin. My visitor informed me of a friend he had that had had a baby recently at only 3 months. I feebly tried to tell him that babies born at 22-23 weeks of gestation are at the outer limits of what modern medicine can now sustain to term and beyond. But after he insisted over and over that she was only 3 months pregnant, I gave up. I was too exhausted and overwhelmed.
I know why everyone asks when Ella is going to come home. For everyone else, it's the only thing they understand. They don't see her, struggling to take every single breath of air. Safe to grow in my womb, she would never have been forced to breath to live. Nobody that asks about when she's going home understands the obstacles that she must overcome. Born weighing less than a pound and a half, she can't maintain her body temperature for even a second outside of her incubator. I see how people only want for our happiness -- they ask when she'll be home because that day, they think, will be our day to rejoice.
But we rejoice every day. We marvel at the hour she finally comes off the ventilator and moves to the next breathing apparatus. We continue to marvel every hour she stays off the ventilator. We equally marvel when we first see her eyes open or we notice that her lanugo has been replaced by the sight of healthy, unbroken pink skin.
Her first day at home will be a day to rejoice, to be sure. But also, it will be another step of the journey. Our doctors and nurses are already preparing us to expect monitors and oxygen tanks for her transition to home. Leaving the NICU, even months down the road, will probably not mean that all her struggles will be over.
In the meantime, I'm happy to report that our little Ella Tate is already 1 lb, 13 oz. Tomorrow she will finally be at what would have been her gestational age of 28 weeks. We are so proud of her each and every day for being such a fighter. I will sit happily with the knowledge that she very well might one day grow to be a rebellious teenager, as long as I can also know that today, tomorrow, and each day in the future she will be as stubborn a fighter.