Stolen Embrace
Do you want to hold her?” the nurse asks me.
I do want to, but I am nervous. She is very ill now, deeply poisoned by an army of invisible creatures. Her body is so weakened that it has been skipping and faltering. There are a zigzag of wires and tubes connected to her, all feeding her body something it needs to survive this. There is a gaping hole in her flesh just above her stomach where the stitches surrounding her feeding tube have slipped out. Through the hole, I can see her shiny, dark red stomach. I look away and face the nurse.
“Yes,” I say bravely.
I settle myself into the chair they have placed beside her metal and plexiglass bassinet. The hard, wide chair is set awkwardly close to the equipment because my baby’s lines don’t go far. I tuck blankets under and around me, trying to mimic the feel of a nursery rocker. It takes me a moment to drape a sweet smelling cotton blanket across me to form a barrier between my (perhaps) germ-infected clothes and my daughter’s fragile body.
As I get settled, the nurse adeptly wraps up wires, moves feeders and medicine pumps, disconnects the heater, and scoops my child out of her bed into my waiting arms.
I study her beautiful face. She is so dainty, with a rosebud mouth, tiny nub of a nose, and huge, dark blue-ringed eyes. I want her to smile or somehow indicate that she is happy to be with me; that she knows me to be different from the hordes of others who handle her, but she is too sick for such affections.
Her six and a half pound body feels very heavy to me. I suddenly realize that she is perfectly still, not breathing. Bile and panic rise in the back of my throat.
“She’s not breathing,” I manage to say to the nurse who is hovering over us. The nurse quickly turns to consult the monitor screen. The numbers reassure her.
“She’s okay,” the nurse replies over my shoulder.
“She’s not breathing,” I say again, only louder with strong emphasis on the word ‘not.’
The nurse glances at the screen again. She puts her hand on my shoulder to soothe me, and says, “She’s okay. It’s okay.”
A baby girl in our pod has died this morning. Infection, our shared enemy, destroyed her overnight. Not more than an hour ago I was with that mother and child as the mourning process began in the hospital’s small “family” room. That mother and I had passed a bit of NICU time together waiting on our daughters. She held out her baby, dressed up like a little princess, and I accepted the bundle because no other reaction seemed appropriate.
It has only been a few seconds. The nurse trusts the monitors and she thinks I am having a reaction to the morning’s sorrow. But now I know what it feels like to hold a lifeless baby, and this feels exactly the same.
I am shaking from an overload of adrenaline in my system. I want to throw my baby into the nurse’s hands. “She is NOT breathing,” I hear myself shouting. My arms will not obey me and I cannot lift her up.
Finally, the monitor corroborates with me and sounds the alarm. Immediately, the nurse whisks my baby on to an open bassinet and begins to bag her with a portable mask and oxygen pump.
I stare at the monitor, watching for my baby’s return. It comes swiftly. The nurse assures me that Kimani is okay, that the apnea has passed.
It is not okay, though, because now I don’t want to hold her anymore.
TUC is a mother to six, an advocate and writer, and a really good cook who blogs about the b-side of life at The Unknown Contributor.
Editor’s note: I dedicate this beautifully written post to all the mothers who have gone through, or are currently going through, their own NICU experience. Although this story took place nearly four years ago, I am sure you will agree its message is timeless: follow your mother’s instinct. It is rarely wrong.
