Stolen from another blog....

I am a parent mentor at the UW NICU. I go in twice a month and talk to other families that have babies in the NICU. It is very rewarding for me to be able to help others deal with many of the same feelings and fears I did.

I highly encourage them to write down their feelings and one family did have a blog already started and the mom put the first blog about their son a week after he was born. So many of the things she said hit home for me and I can't read it w/out crying. I'm going to share what she wrote because so many people didn't understand what I was truly going through. You can try to feel it, but you can't unless you are actually going through it.

Here are two excerpts from their blog:

"I missed the first 36 hours of my son's life. It was miserable. After all the drugs and the immediate rehab I missed even more than that. By Wednesday, I had only been allowed to hold my son twice. That should be criminal! I was sad and tortured in my room by sounds of other crying babies who were with their mamas, and the sight of that empty crib in my room. Every time my hand rested on my tummy I was reminded of my loss and my desire to touch and comfort my baby. "

"To those who have erroneously thought and said this must be a good thing in that we get more time to get ready for the baby, we say "Suck It!" This is far, far from a vacation or in anyway a good thing. We are suffering here. The only silver lining is him. He is alive and he is doing better. Other than that, being separate from him is one of the cruelest parts of life I have had yet to bear."

I remember people telling me to enjoy the "time off" and to do things I want to do or to go back to work. The only thing I wanted to do was to be with them, holding them, comforting them, letting them know I was there and loving them, even though I wasn't able to hold them very much at first. I had a major surgery and wasn't suppose to work for 6 weeks, so that wouldn't have even been possible, let alone the emotional torture.

The emptiness leaving the hospital every night, WITHOUT my babies. I had my diaper bag I used as a purse....that was as close to bringing home a baby that I had.

This may sound crazy, but it would upset me when people congratulated me. I thought..."I have two babies in the ICU that are fighting to live.....WHY are you congratulating me?" I guess if I would have had a normal birth or time leading up to birth or be able to see my babies right after delivery and felt like I just had twins, I would have felt more like I was being congratulated on the birth of two alive babies. It was quite devestating to have my birth plans turned upside down and being totally unprepared for what happened. I felt cheated, like many parents of premature babies do.

Well, enough of how I felt...reading her blog brought back so many feelings that I never expresses. Jacob is now whimpering in my room. He hasn't been feeling good since he threw up a few hours ago. I'm thankful he is here with me now! .... and Robby is sawing logs in his own bed. He plays so hard he really zonks out at night.