I rode the lift to the fifth floor just as I had every day for the first 148 days of my child’s life. This time however, was different. We were going back. Only for a follow up appointment but the squirming, uneasy sensation in my stomach and my sweaty palms didn’t seem to know that.
My heart pounded as the computerized voice declared “Fifth, fifth, floor, floor” and the doors slid open. We turned the corner and suddenly the corridor I’d walked down hundreds, possibly thousands of times, looked immensely longer than it ever had before and then there was the smell of the antibacterial hand soap. While Erin was in hospital I didn’t mind it, in fact I liked it, it reminded me of her, now though, it brings back the fear and hurt that I’d repressed while in the thick of things.
Since we’ve been home I’ve noticed a sharp increase of flash backs, crying spells and imaginings—I swear I sometimes hear patient monitors and alarms. I don’t know if what I’m experiencing is Post Traumatic Stress, “just” depression or something else entirely. Maybe this is one of those lovely “normal” things that NICU parents get to experience. Whatever it is it doesn’t feel normal.
When your baby’s in hospital you don’t have time to deal with the emotional baggage that piles up as a result of having an early and possibly sick baby. You simply don’t have time and if you go to pieces who’s going to deal with the hundred and one things you need to do to keep your life going? No one. So you keep going and your baggage keeps piling up until you come home with a baby who cries for no reason, wants to be held at all hours of the night, who either, doesn’t eat and doesn’t grow or wants to eat all the time but still doesn’t grow!
So now you’re a crazy bag lady with a baby tucked under your arm, nappies piled in the corner, bags under your eyes that could easily accommodate your NICU baggage and armpit hair down to your elbows from a months worth of showers aborted due to screaming! At some point you’re going to explode and it’s not going to be pretty.
But you don’t because if you do who’s going to look after the baby, the house, the husband and any other kids you may have and where did that cat come from? Instead you wait for that rare moment when the baby’s quiet and you’re FINALLY alone and you just cry or you don’t because you’re afraid that if you start to cry you may never stop. Instead you just go silently crazier.
There are no answers in this post. I don’t know how to deal with what I’m feeling; I don’t even know what to call it. Somehow I think finding a name would help.
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Well my baby has been home for over a year now but initially I completely fell apart. I don’t think I slept for 6 months after she was home and spent a great deal of time sitting in the corner of my backyard bawling my eyes out.
When we were in NICU (my DH and I lived on site for the 3 months she was there), I always had a nurse or dr or cleaner to chat to, I had people around me whjo were experiencing the same thing, the same emotions. When I came home with a sick baby on oxygen, with ng tubes and an apnoea alarm that would go off during the day and night, not to mention the 3 hourly feeds and the expressing, I was all alone. DH went back to work, my friends had no idea how to cope with the situation and I was completely isolated.
Everyone said it would be easier when she was home but my PND really hit then and I was a mess.
I really don’t want to go too far into it as it was a horrible, bleak time for me but I found an excellent counsellor who managed to really help me and now I am 100%.
It does get better I promise, they start to settle into a routine, they sleep better, they grow and put on weight, they know you and smile when they recognise you and you start to have faith in your ability to be their mum and then you realise you haven’t killed them accidentally yet, or they haven’t stopped breathing and you meet someone who has been where you are and survived and then you realise you haven’t bawled for a week!