Gratitude is a skill every father would do well to cultivate when having kids. Diapers that smell like a sewer? Excellent. Thank you. Projectile vomit? I appreciate it, may I have another? Wriggling off the changing table? Thank you for that. I didn’t know I was so grateful for all of those things until I saw my kid in the NICU struggling to breathe.
We went in for the weekly exam that you go in for during the last stretch of the final trimester to make sure baby was progressing. She wasn’t. It had been difficult for this one to grow the last couple months, always in the lowest single digit percentiles. We thought it would change for the better, like her sister. But every child is different. They said that day that they needed to induce labor and take her that week. Didn’t see that one coming. A mix of hope, excitement, fear, and a dash of panic set in. We did what we were told. They induced. She came. Baby girl number two, the one I dreamed about years earlier being tough and a fighter was delivered. She came out fighting…for life. She was born early and her lungs weren’t ready. We were hoping for a cry and we didn’t get one. She didn’t cry, she barely whimpered. The normal celebrations didn’t happen like before. All the smiles and congratulations and “Isn’t she cute?!” or “Look at those precious little hands!” They passed her from professional to professional. They poked, they measured, they observed. They exchanged concerned looks with one another. I don’t think they saw us looking.
We couldn’t take our little girl home that night, the doctors needed to help her survive. I learned words like nasal cannula and oxygen saturation and NICU, which stands for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Parenting is full of oddities, you always hear about the trouble with crying, and here we were experiencing the trouble with no crying. She was in the hospital one day. Then two. Then three. She wasn’t gaining weight…she was losing it. Not enough milk going down. Not enough oxygen coming in. We had to go home and try to sleep. We came back to the hospital the next morning. We felt guilty for leaving our baby there. They had a new program with cameras on her so we could go home and look at her on our computers and phones. We were thankful for that. We felt guilty we were thankful for that. Should we have been there every second? I told my wife everything would be alright, that she was a fighter. But I had to fight to believe it myself, and be thankful she was still in the ring.
Some parents had it worse. Much worse. They had come from hundreds of miles away. They had been there for weeks and months. Their babies were so tiny, ours looked like Godzilla at 4 pounds 15 ounces. We were the fortunate ones. Others had taken their babies home to say their final goodbyes.
Day four passed. Back and forth to the hospital, staring at the 02 saturation numbers. The hospital is a noisy place, it’s a wonder anyone can sleep when everything beeps like an anti-sleep orchestra. Heart beep steady and constant. Lung beep a lower sound. Two beeps for this. Three for that. Paging Doctor Smith. Beep. Beep. Beep. Does anyone go insane in these places? Not the babies, they don’t seem to mind. Their life is in the beeps. We hold her hands to the sound of the rhythm of the beeps. We pray over her. We tell her she is beautiful and strong. We touch her and tell her she is loved. Some babies have no parents praying over them. Nurses love on them the best they can, but its not a parent’s love.
Day 5. Ounces are gaining. 02 saturation is higher. Breathes on her own a little more. Day 6. Starting to breathe on her own more. Day 7. Time to go home. Finally. Now what? We’re responsible for her, we have internal beeps that wake us up to check on her. We’re changing diapers, rocking our baby to sleep in our own home. But she’s not having it, this place is foreign to her. There are no beeps. Then she lets us know she’s not happy. She cries. And we are grateful.