I was not ready to be a premie Mom.

I wasn’t ready to be a premie mom.

When our son was born 5 weeks before date, though we wanted to meet him in person, we weren’t really ready to welcome him into this world. Not the way he arrived. The minute he was pulled out of the incision made below my abdomen, he was shown to me and taken away to be shown to the other family members waiting outside. I was too tired from the long wait of a c-section procedure and so patiently waited for him to be brought back to me. While they stitched me up and transferred me to the post operative ward, I waited to see my baby. The wait was long. The next 24 hours I was knocked out by all the pain killers or so I thought. When I was conscious enough to understand what was going on, I asked the nurse about my baby’s whereabouts. She explained he was at the neonatal intensive care unit as his lungs were not fully functional when he was born. I made the most difficult trip out of bed. Holding my sore stitch in one hand, I pushed myself out of the bed with all my might. My eyes squeezed shut and I thought of my baby in the NICU. I was going to see him.

My husband and I sanitised our hands before being led through the doors of NICU. Once inside the first sounds our brains registered was that of the monitors beeping continuously. The doctors station was at the entrance and one of the nurses pointed to the area our baby was. The glass bassinets were neatly lined far enough from each other. Some of them had the hoods on and the others were open but all of them had the bright heat lamp shining over them. On closer inspection we read our baby’s name on one chart. He was sleeping there with a tube through his nose for the feeds. I couldn’t believe I had not seen him since the time he was born. I asked my husband if he was the same baby we had given birth to. They all looked alike: tiny, probably way too smaller than the doll my daughter played with. He was only dressed in his diaper. I asked the nurse if I could hold him. She handed him to me with the tube reminding us of his current place.

He felt much lighter than when he was in me. The fluids and placenta had added a lot to his weight. We looked at him still sleeping while I held him close to my chest. He wasn’t ready to suckle nor was my body ready to feed. My body hadn’t enough time to produce the most important feed for my baby. We held him for some more time until the nurse showed us her face reminding us we had to leave.

We went back to our room and anxiously waited for the next few hours before we could see him again. For the next 24 hours we visited him every two hours. He slept all the time intermittently opening his eyes like he was dreaming. The first time I tried feeding him, the nurse explained he was too small to learn how to suckle. I waited for some more time but she too couldn’t get him to learn it so quickly. The next day I was asked to express some of the breast milk so that they could feed it through the tube. I didn’t know how to. They gave me a sterile container and showed me to a room. I saw another woman sitting there and she too was expressing her milk for her baby. She looked like she had been doing it for a while. Shameless as it may sound, I saw how she did it. She had bluish marks on her breasts where she had been pressing them for the most precious milk. I tried for some time in vain. When my body wasn’t ready and my hands weren’t experienced, I felt miserable I wasn’t able to do so much for my baby who was probably hungry by now. I went to the nurse and almost in tears told her I had an empty container. She assured me it was alright and that the formula feed was also good for the baby. She advised I could buy a breast pump which was a lot easier than manual way.

For a few days after that we sterilised the feed containers and pump collector a lot of times. Our baby was getting all that he wanted. He was slowly beginning to look fuller and he opened his eyes more. This time long enough for us to look at his eyes and find out who he resembled more. Soon we were able to take him home. He was much smaller than we anticipated but he was good to go home.

At home, the baby care giver refused to give him a oil massage and a bath so we gave him a sponge bath for a fortnight until he felt a little more heavier. He was given special attention and soon enough he took all of our time when he started behaving at par with a baby born full term. He now calls himself Hulk sometimes, at times Superman, Thor or Spiderman. He is my Marvel Man no doubt.