One Week In in Leah's NICU Journey

Sometimes you just need your mom.

This isn’t a surprise to any of you, especially those following me on Facebook and knowing how close I am with my family, but this week has been the biggest bonding experience my mom and I have had yet. I get her role as my mom now and I have a new appreciation for her love and her adoration and her willingness to sacrifice on a whole new level. Today is not only Leah’s one week birthday but also the one week anniversary of my mom being there for the birth, being an incredible support and of her not leaving my side for one second after delivery even though everyone else swarmed the baby and went up to the NICU with her as I laid behind. I can’t even count the number of times she’s said “Leah is your baby but you’re my baby. As much as you love and care for her, I love and care for you. I want to be here for you any way you need me.” For that, for a million reasons, I’m thankful for my mom this week.

We hit a bit of a stumbling block with Leah’s eating recently and while she was still eating her breast milk volume goals, it was with more and more struggle to keep her awake and keep her suckling. It would take me nearly an hour of fighting & poking & prodding a sluggish baby to get the last 10 mL in and when I only get an hour or two between pumping sessions at night, spending an entire hour trying to feed my little munchkin means no sleep at all for either of us. Thus we made the decision to place a feeding tube which we’ll use to give her the last bits of the bottles that she tires out on and can’t quite finish on her own. She’s still breastfeeding once per day and otherwise bottle feeding breast milk I pump. My supply is doing pretty well but it’s a constant job when you’re doing something that takes 45 minutes to do every two hours. There is not enough time in the day!

Thanks to so much lack of sleep my emotions have worn thinner and thinner. While I still genuinely feel hormonally stable, emotionally content, proud and optimistic about Leah’s outlook in general, every little thing seems to make me cry. I couldn’t be more thankful that I get to stay in the NICU with Leah, sleeping three feet away and sitting in a rocking chair inches from her bassinet but it also means motherhood is very, very real for me. I don’t go home, I leave her side only to shower and eat food and I wouldn’t have it any other way because I am her mom and my job right now is to help her get big and get home…but it is quite the lifestyle change on top of becoming a new mom and a new mom to a tenuous little one at that. My emotions have been fragile and while Rob tries his best to understand and support me, his life is largely unchanged (he’s waiting to take his paternity leave until Leah comes home) and he’s still working, going to happy hours, going to football games and socializing. Our lives are completely different now and I miss him…but in a very compartmentalized way. We both have put our emotional needs from one another one hold and say what you will, it’s the best we can do right now. Leah needs all of me, physically and emotionally, and I’m more than happy to give her everything I’ve got.

I can already see your well intended notes reminding me to take care of myself. Believe me, I hear that loud and clear from friends and family here. It’s come to feel like taking care of Leah is taking care of myself. I feel best when she’s being taken care of by me, not by the nurses, and that I’m the one doing her bottles and changing her diapers and snuggling her close. The more I do those things the more I feel normal, balanced and stable. I’m going to be taking her home some day and doing all of those things so the more comfortable I get now, the better I’ll be at anticipating her needs and helping Rob learn The World Of Leah. He has changed one diaper and held her twice, giving her only one bottle. He has a lot more experience to gain once we get back but that’s why I’m here and fighting with her and giving everything I’ve got to get her back with us. I do understand that in order to care for her, I need to care for me and so I’ve relied on my best friend and my mom an incredible amount this week. I am cheerful and upbeat with most everyone and I do overall feel really good but some days I just have to break down and be frustrated and sad or simply feel all the things that come with having a premature baby in a NICU completely out of my routine. They both have been wonderful, listening to me cry and rubbing my back and validating my worries and offering solutions and fixes and love. So much love. It’s incredible to feel how loved you are when you really need it and people are giving giving giving and you’re too weak/busy/burdened to give anything back. They’re both being my people and I will spend the rest of my days helping them see how much this support has kept me afloat.

My sister is really struggling with her baby and I’ll touch on that more in another entry. I don’t have the strength left to rehash how broken she is, how much she “hates” motherhood (her words), how much she wants to get away and regrets having the baby and is despondent and withdrawn and even possibly dangerous. It’s so much, so big, so heavy and hard and painful to discuss that I’m just going to leave what I have here and walk away. I can’t open up the wound that I just barely fixed by talking with my mom about it. It’s awful, truly, and I hope it gets better but I fear there is a big terrible catastrophic something coming either with her or her baby and I simply don’t have the time right now to help steer her Titanic away from the iceberg.

I do need to go get some dinner for me now and get ready for bed and start my night routine of pumping/bottle feeds/cat naps every three hours. It isn’t as bad as I think I can make it seem when I come here and emotionally dump (so many days and moments are SO good - so so good) and I get to be by my Leah so it’s more than worth it. Any time I get to see her sweet face and sing to her and hold her warm little body against my chest makes every sacrifice, fear, worry and stress disappear. She has become my world and as much as that might seem crazy or ridiculous or unhealthy to outsiders, it makes sense to me. She makes sense to me and I’ve never felt a purpose like this one. I get now how much my mom loves me, how deeply and profoundly and to the soul she would sacrifice for me and give every last part of herself to help make me happy. I get that because I feel the same for Leah. So, grow Leah grow…let’s get home soon.

Last updated November 14, 2014