Words have not come to me as easily as they always do, somewhat frozen in time and place. Over the past few months I’ve read so many anecdotes written by NICU parents but my own experiences seem to flit past every time I sit down and put pen to paper. Nothing I’ve typed out felt genuine or true to my experience, and sounded hollow to my own ears. I spent a good part of the past year telling myself that I should feel grateful, while struggling to feel gratefulness in any way, shape or form. 

There is something inexplicably unnatural about being separated from your newborn baby - whether it’s for a day or a few months (though I’ll never know either extreme as I landed at a “happy” in between of one month). For me, holding my 3.3lb baby for the first time a few hours after he was rushed to the NICU, felt nothing short of my brain breaking into two pieces - the piece still in me that hovered next to him, and the piece so far away that it all felt like an out of body experience. 

All through that month, I found it nearly impossible to communicate with even my closest friends. Everyone’s lives felt unrelatable, or perhaps I was afraid that it was my life that was unrelatable. I wasn’t sure how to describe the feeling of commuting an hour each day merely 4 days after my C-section, drugged up on a cocktail of painkillers, unable to lift my tubed and wired baby out of the incubator without the help of a nurse. The embarrassment of fumbling through diaper changes while wrangling with the tangled wires, afraid of what was going to snap in the process. The transition from tube-feeding to bottle feeds, all while struggling through the stress of pumping for mere drops of milk. The adrenaline rush of the final few days of - will he be going home today or not? And the beeping, the beeping, the constant beeping of the NICU. 

Nothing prepared me for the things after either - the intense ROP eye exams (I excused myself from the doctor’s office for these, thankful for a partner who is braver than I am), navigating the state’s Early Intervention program for babies born under 1500g or 32 weeks, trying to track preemie milestones based on actual vs adjusted age, staring dumbfounded the first few times a stranger asked me how old my baby is (I still don’t know how to respond to this one). 

You tell yourself that the NICU shouldn’t define your motherhood experience, but it inevitably does. The trauma comes and goes, sometimes in small waves and sometimes with the rush of a roaring tsunami - when you turn the light on El Camino only to realize you’re just a street away from the harrowing NICU halls, or when a simple beeping noise triggers a slurry of emotions. The smell of Purell still brings back those 4 weeks of over-sanitizing my fingers to the point where the skin on my knuckles started peeling off. 

For months, the triggers continued. Someone I know made it to full term. I feel wonderful, she said, the day after giving birth and cuddling with her newborn. A sense of guilt consumed me, the shame of knowing that even months after, I could not say the word Wonderful. Congratulations on the baby, congratulations on him being home, I was told repeatedly. I was unsure where to dig up anything celebratory for my baby who is alive and here with me, but who should have still been growing inside of me. Knowing that this was still the best case scenario, but unable to accept that this was the best case scenario. 

Nearly 11 months later, I can almost say the word Wonderful again, thanks to family, friends and the most incredible therapist. It’s shocking how time can, truly, heal. Maybe one day, I’ll have the words to write something longer, bigger, truer.