So close to losing everything

The LAP forum had a thread running on “the hardest part of your NICU journey”. It made me think back to the long days of CPAP and desats (very tedious) and trying to establish breastfeeding (very stressful), and before that to the day I was discharged from hospital, leaving my beautiful, fragile little daughter behind in a humidicrib. It coincided with my “baby blues” day and I was more or less inconsolable, bursting into tears at the slightest thought of my baby. My husband couldn’t get me back to the NICU fast enough, he was so worried about me.

However, the single worst aspect of the entire journey, the part I would least want to go through again, was the evening I was admitted to hospital. It was the moment when they told me I might be having a baby within hours, when (knowing nothing about premature babies) I believed she was coming too early and would surely die, and my wonderful husband was away overseas, knowing nothing about what was taking place, and he could not comfort me as I lay strapped to the monitors, shaking and frightened.

Thank goodness for the miracles of modern medicine, for the drugs and the machines and the caring and technical skills of doctors and nurses, and (something we take for granted in Australia today) easy access to a clean, well equipped hospital where they have lots of experience in dealing with premature babies.

My grandmother went through this personal hell. No miracles. No baby.