Part of my NICU experience, I think, was because it was so close to Christmas. I've known a few other women who delivered at the same hospital I did and they had a completely different experience. I am an optimist. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. The moral of the story? Don't have a baby close to a holiday--especially Christmas.
I was often discouraged and depressed while my baby was in the NICU. The nurses weren't supportive of me holding her. They said she needed to stay in the isolette in order to maintain her temperature. I never had one nurse--not one--recommend kangaroo care or skin to skin bonding. I know now that if I'd have held my baby skin to skin, my body heat would have helped her maintain her temperature and would have helped facilitate breastfeeding. The bonding and closeness to me would have helped her get stronger. My baby didn't require oxygen--the only reason to have her tethered to her isolette was to keep her temperature up. I feel like I was robbed of the experience of early bonding with my daughter.
I wanted closeness. I wanted to touch my baby. Because she was "required" to stay in the isolette, I would often open the little portholes and lay my hands on her back. I desperately needed the contact, and knew she did, too. I got reprimanded constantly for doing that because by having the portholes open, the ambient temperature in the isolette would decrease. I couldn't win.
I was pumping every 3 hours, 24 hours a day and my supply was pitiful. I was hell bent on my beautiful child being weaned off of the terrible smelling formula and getting only my breastmilk. People would tell us to go home and get some rest..enjoy our evenings. How could we? All we wanted was to have our baby home with us.
Adam and I spent a lot of time at the hospital, leaving only so I could pump. I would tell the nurses that we were leaving so I could pump. Not once did they tell me that I could pump in the NICU. They never told me that pumping while looking at my child could help me yield more milk or get another letdown.
There were times that the nurses refused to let us give our child a bottle. We got to watch them hold and feed our child. We got lucky with some of the night nurses. They were incredibly kind and because of them, we got to change our first diapers and were always allowed to feed her.
I was never encouraged to put my baby to the breast. When I brought it up, one of the day nurses told me it wasn't a good idea because they had to measure every ounce of milk or formula my child was consuming. If they couldn't measure the amount and keep track, I was told that she'd have to stay longer. I felt like she was being held hostage.
The second day of my child's life, I had a breakdown after being reprimanded for having my hands on my child. When I started to cry, the nurse asked what my problem was. I told her I felt like my child didn't belong to me. I still remember how that felt.
When Bettie was about 3 months old, I saw the documentary What Babies Want. In that documentary, they talked about preemies from the perspective of the baby. They said that because preemies spend so much time around machines, they bond with the machines. It was a simple statement, but it broke my heart. I broke down into hysterics over that simple, very short segment in a documentary because I felt like it was true. I felt that with all the "regulations" my baby was probably forced to bond with machines instead of me.
