The Twins NICU Journey
Today is Premature Awareness Day so we thought it would be a great time to share Mon's experience with her boys in the NICU.
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Having babies in the NICU was one of the most difficult times of my life. I remember driving away from the hospital after getting discharged and every mile farther away from my babies I felt worse and worse. I could feel it in my gut. It felt so wrong to not have the presence of my babies. The babies I had felt twitch and turn for the last 8 months. The whole time when we were away from them I’d either be crying or sleeping. I was a complete mess and had a constant knot of fear in my stomach.
We had a long drive to the hospital so we’d go once a day and do a feeding, skin-to-skin, and talk to the doctors. We usually only got to hold one since that first week they couldn't be moved around too much. It’s so unnatural to have to ask to hold your baby and to only be able to hold one at a time. I always left feeling guilty that I didn’t hold them both.
Friends and family would reach out for updates and I knew it was because they cared and were worried, but it was too much for me to update them. It was hard to talk to people about what we were going through when I knew they just couldn't understand the pain I was in. Even my husband couldn’t fully fathom just how hard it was for me to barely be able to hold my babies. I had a biological need to hold them and I couldn’t. Because of this, I had my best friends update our friend group so I didn’t have to and my husband updated my family. I just didn’t want to talk about it, I wanted to hole up and just get through it.
It was such a trying time. We reached out to people who had been there and they gave us words of encouragement and reassurance. Just knowing other people had gotten through this and felt the same overwhelming fear and pain was helpful.
The second week we were able to hold the boys more often and I was able to start nursing and the nurses and doctors started to have conversations with us about taking them home. We gave them their first bath and we got to put them in the same incubator to “meet” out of the womb for the first time. The nurses were truly amazing and I’m so glad the boys had such wonderful care.
My advice to moms going through this is to find a support system. You need to talk to someone who has been through it. Looking back I’m also really glad we slept at home. I was able to rest and recover so I could be present when we were there and was better healed when we did get to take them home.
