My "son wrote" to me 24 times since the day he was born. He "sent me" email letters every day starting two days after he was born and continued until the day he came home. I have them all saved on my computer to add to his little book and show them to him one day. The letters were all about his progress in the NICU. Every morning, between 6 and 7, I would receive the letter and read it off my phone. Sometimes it was the highlight of my day. Most of the times I knew exactly what they would say because I spoke to the nurse half an hour before I was due to receive the letter, but still... I had just gotten mail from MY SON.
I received my first letter while I was still in the hospital recovering from delivery. He was just across a few halls and we (the parents) could go see him anytime we wanted, day or night! Receiving that first letter was such a happy/frightening kind of moment. The concept of updating the mommys and daddys with babies in the NICU with an email every morning was pretty neat, but the raw truth behind my son's condition was so damn scary. My peanut was just 3lbs 10.8 oz, he was on 25% oxygen, he was being fed through a tube. Get this...: 3ml a feeding for a total of 18 ml for the day. That was only .6 ounces A DAY. How on earth can any living thing survive on .6 oz of food a day??
He was also on IV Liquids which obviously helped with the fact that he was on such low food intake.
His lungs were not developed yet. He had jaundice.
It was the forbidden thought, but I am sure it happened a lot between my husband and I in silence.. was he even going to make it?
The content of the letters were to let us know what,if anything, had changed from one day to next: such as getting off the oxygen, how much weight he gained or lost, etc.
And then, there was a sentence in that first letter... I will never forget it for the remaining of my days living on this earth:
Adios Mommy and Daddy. Keep a picture of me with you so that we can be "together" until I get home. It will make us both feel better!
And that's when I lost it! I cried... I cried and read the sentence out loud in tears to my hubby who was laying on the chair next to my hospital bed...
How on Earth did we get here.. again? How can this be happening to us.. Again? and by that I don't mean.. How can we be having another preemie; I mean... how can such a painful, stressful, scary thing be happening... again! This time, to our most precious little human being that we had created, to the one who was supposed to bring you happiness and joy and make you forget all the worries in the world. How can that much more worry and stress and anger and all kinds of ugly emotions come with him?
The hardest part was by far, leaving the hospital. After 4 days of being there (including the labor and delivery), we left..with a shit load of bags, flowers, balloons, clothes, paperwork, hospital shit you need to get better at home, etc... I mean, we even had help carry stuff out to the car by a friend who came to visit... Yet.. we left EMPTY HANDED!
Our peanut was staying behind, for who knows how long. He was going to stay alone in the long nights, in the dark, connected to all kinds of beeping machines, with strangers changing his diapers and putting his food into a tube... he was going to stay behind to fight his battle...alone.
And us? how about us? how the hell are we supposed to fight our battle at home? without our peanut to keep us going strong? We had no nurses to assist us or change our tear wet sheets, or cheer us on while we found the courage to even take a shower to go one with our every day lives.
While most parents go and get things done and come home with their bundle of joy a couple of days after delivery, that wasn't us!
I passed those mothers every DAMN DAY leaving the hospital in the wheelchairs carrying their own peanuts, while I was coming in to go sit in a chair and put my extremely sanitized hands through two holes in a plastic box to touch my peanut's super little hands.
I passed the dads everyday in the parking lot who carried the balloons and flowers to get their cars to go collect their wife's with their babies to go home, as I was getting out of my car with a back pack with a bunch of snacks for the day and frozen breast milk to bring my peanut.
I passed the proud grandmas and grandpas in the hallways who came to see their new little sunshine, while I brought ONE person at a time into the NICU to get a good scrub up to their elbows and go see my baby through that clear box.
Some days I could not even hold my peanut... I had to just sit and wait.. and wait and sit some more.. and just look at him... right there in front of my eyes within arm's reach.. yet so far away!
Days in the NICU are like endless amount of hours of just waiting, waiting for something to happen, waiting for something to change, waiting for some good news about your baby, waiting to see who's nurse he's having tonight (for 13 hours in a row), waiting for visitors who want to come see the peanut, waiting, waiting... just waiting to wait some more!
And then you go home at night exhausted from waiting all day... and all night you wait!
You wait for that letter from Special K!
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