We're becoming the veterans in our ICN neighborhood. We watch the babies and parents come and go. We have a new neighbor to the north of us, a mom with a preemie a little larger than Clare when she was born. The mom is still in shock and fearful. I recognize that shell-shocked and frantic look! Today the nurses had to do a simple procedure on the baby, who began crying; hearing this, the mom started crying too. Tim and I wanted to tell her it was okay, that she'd get used to her baby crying and that the painful procedures like that one are infrequent and that the babies forget their discomfort easily. I don't know if we ever get truly used to hearing our babies in pain, even briefly, which is why Tim and I left today when it came time for Clare's dermaplast tape to be taken off her face and replaced.
We don't resent the babies and parents whose stays in the ICN are days, rather than weeks. Our little girl is all ours, and we wouldn't trade a thing about her even if it meant going home earlier. Plus, while there may be ten or more short-term babies to each Clare, there are a number of Clares to each baby who is stuck at the hospital for months rather than weeks. We are still very hopeful that (here on the eve of her 4-week birthday) Clare will be among those babies whose stay is measured only in weeks.
Take the baby next to us, for example. She has been in the hospital for many months and has a number of issues that require frequent and lengthy care by one or more nurses. Unlike Clare and most of the rest of the ICN babies, this one's care does cause her considerable discomfort and/or pain and she spends a good deal of her time crying in misery because of it. This baby causes me at times a considerable amount of grief, and not just because we have to listen to the Kenny Loggins CD ad nauseum. Hearing her cry out in pain is awful. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But I must confess that sometimes I get incredibly frustrated by it. When I'm trying to concentrate on Clare, on nursing her or (my favorite activity in the whole world) pumping, the baby's crying is jarring and upsetting. We've gotten so used to the MRSA quarantine that it doesn't phase us any more, but the crying is impossible to ignore. Again, I can only commend the nurses who provide her care.
My other guilty admission is that sometimes I resent the time this other baby takes away from Clare. We know the nurses appreciate Tim and me because we are so self-sufficient with Clare and this frees them up to take care of the baby next door. Regardless, however, there are still a few things that we can't do because neither of us has a nursing degree, and this includes gavaging Clare's feeds. Oftentimes we lose our nurse to our neighbor's quarantine area, and not for short amounts of time. The MRSA issue requires anyone dealing with the baby to don special protective gowns and gloves, and the baby's many care procedures require time-intensive efforts on the part of, as I said earlier, one or more nurses. As we try to get Clare to bottle-feed, we often find ourselves waiting a long time before anyone can gavage whatever Clare can't consume via mouth. This gets her feeding schedule off, so at the next care time when she's checked to see how much she has digested (nurses use the gavage tube to suck out Clare's stomach contents to see and measure, literally, what's left...and then they push it back in!), it appears she hasn't digested much of the previous feeding. Tonight we changed Clare's diaper at 5pm and spent the next maybe half hour working on the bottle. We then had to wait until after 6pm before anyone was available to gavage the rest. The milk had been by that time sitting out for over an hour, and this caused me some anxiety. Now please know, I feel awful for feeling this way. It's not the neighbor baby's fault, and it's not our nurse's fault, either. I adore Clare's nurses and I know they are frustrated by the situation as well and don't like putting Clare's less-dire needs below those of the neighbor baby. They appreciate us and feel for us and we share in this mutual frustration. (Incidentally, each nurse in the ICN is responsible for three babies, except for ours, who is responsible for just Clare and our neighbor.) I know I should just be grateful that my baby is healthy and will be coming home someday soon. But I guess the new parent in me wants to protect my baby's interest at all costs.
So there's my rambling confession.
In other news, Tim and I continue to make small steps back toward normalcy. Last night I went for my first post-delivery run; it was just a mile, but it felt great and I'm not too sore today, and I know miles 2, 3, 4, and beyond aren't too far away. Last night Tim and I also walked up to the grocery store, something we used to do regularly but haven't done since before my water broke May 20. We've begun our thank you cards and are starting to figure out how to organize drawers in Clare's room. This is significant because we are now looking to Clare's room hopefully and with eager anticipation, not avoiding it because our baby isn't there and it makes us sad. Tomorrow I'll head into work after her 8am care, stupid hated pump in tow, and this week Tim has an AP conference in Bellevue Tuesday through Friday. And this is a week of several milestones: Clare will be four weeks old tomorrow. On Wednesday, she'll reach 36 weeks' gestation. And on Friday, she'll be one month old. We look toward the near future, when she masters the skill of eating and can come home and be our full-time, real baby, all ours to love and hold and protect and teach and cherish.
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