NICU Reflections

I’m not sure if the feelings I carry with me from our experience with the NICU – fear,  sadness, grief, utter terror – will ever cease completely. Smells, photos and dreams revive those feelings to the surface.

In a month and a half we will be celebrating Landon’s second birthday. Two full years separate then, the worst time in our life, and now.

Our good friends, Shane and Claudia, had their first son recently, almost six full weeks early. He is still making strides in the NICU. Claudia’s water broke prematurely and very unexpectedly. He was born healthy, just early. Minor battles in the huge scheme of things, but battles nonetheless. He should be home thriving very, very soon.

I wouldn’t wish The NICU Experience on any mother.

It is really circumstance that has kept me from visiting Claudia and baby Issac in the NICU? I’m not sure. Things keep coming up – babysitters unavailable, illness, Dylan picking up a shift on his days off, pre-planned trips – that have redirected my plans of meeting this new, sweet person who I am sure will be a big part of my life. So why is he almost two weeks old and I haven’t met him or why I have I not supported my friend with a sympathetic hug and a stack of magazines? To be blunt and honest, I am a little afraid to step back into a NICU. I am afraid to see someone I care about swaddled under artificial light. I am afraid to hear all those monitors, to see the tubes and wires, to see the incubators and bags of hanging life support. I can relate it to a war vetran hearing a car backfire. I am sure to be sent whorling into an emotional state that I have tried to suppress these past months, and I don’t want to find myself again scared and hurting in a fetal position …