So the entire time I was pregnant I watched all those scary shows about child birth and delivery. Needless to say..even more reason I wasn't so keen on having kids. These shows terrified the living daylights out of me!! I'm sure it was edited for TV but still!! One thing that the show always shows is after the mom delivers the baby the nurses hand her over...and you get to hold, embrace, and hear the baby cry for the first time. At the time this really didn't seem like such a big deal but now that I look back on it..I wish I had that experience.
After I had London, she was rushed over to a station where they were checking all her vitals, breathing, and all the medical necessary whoohaa. But what scared me the most is I didn't hear her cry until about around one minute after they took her. She was then rushed into the NICU to be placed into a incubator. Some welcome into the world huh?
I got to see London a couple hours after she was born..it scared me so much to see this tiny little body covered with wires, tubes and monitors. Its just not what you imagine or wish upon such a lil innocent baby. This is the start of the 31 days of NICU life.
After I was discharged I would spend most of my waking hours at the hospital, only really leaving during the nurses shift change. Everyday I would walk in and they would give me the goals they had for London and how well she had done during the night. Sometimes she would take giant leaps forward and some days it would be giant steps back. It was an emotional roller coaster. I mean I never knew how stressful it would be to want your baby to learn how to maintain the body temperature and feed off of a bottle. This is something the "reality shows" don't tell you. Their little bodies just can't handle being held for to long..or sometimes feeding her half an ounce would exhaust her for the rest of the day. London had to constantly have an IV in to give her vitamins or medicine. She had such tiny weak veins they would blow or give out, the worst experience I had was being witness of them trying for over an hour poking and prodding while London screamed her head off. I still to this day don't know who cried harder London or myself.
After a couple days of adjusting to this new routine and still fumbling over how to hold her without pulling wires loose and dealing with my personal hormone issues...THE BREASTFEEDING NAZIS would attack!! I swear they would hit me up at the wrong times every time!
I'm not knocking breastfeeding at all...I gave it a good shot!! But MAN these women would give me a hard time!!
Nazi: Miss Green it looks like your milk supply you brought in today isn't enough for London's feedings so we are going to have to give her formula..you should know that her body needs your milk to get out of the NICU faster. Are you drinking enough water? What can we do to help..lets us watch and walk you threw the process...how many times are you pumping..blah blah blah!
Gees..all I want is to spend time with London and not be a stressed out crazy maniac who wants to scream in your face!! Those women were only trying to help but it drove me NUTS!! I would leave so upset everyday! But nothing was harder than leaving London all alone in a tiny incubator.
I really never felt like I got an idea of what mommy hood was all about because of everything I was missing out on. I wasn't with her all the time. I didn't know what her different cries sounded like, how she wanted to be held, how to dress her and so much more. But after those 31 days I was in for a HUGE mommy awaking......
 |
| Fumbling over her feeding tube |
