Precious Moments

The first time I saw Emma, she was sleeping in her own private room in her little isolate with her tiny sunglasses on under the blue light. She had a little pointed chin and little pixie ears. Those little lips. Her hair was light and wavy. She was beautiful. Our daughter. They had her swaddled up tight in a pretty pink blanket. I was not allowed to hold her. There was a strict policy of "do not disturb." Every movement, even every mental/visual stimulation, was burning calories they were working hard to keep. There was a custom shaped blanket over her isolate to keep things very dark, like the womb. I was allowed to pull back the blanket, open the little portholes on the side and very quietly and gently rest my hand on her body. Rodney and I stood in amazement.

"Allowed..."  This is my child, right? These are my babies? Not that I knew what it was like to have a child, and not that I wanted to "possess" them, but to be given rules, limitations... and to have nurses helping themselves to what needed to be done was a little strange for me. I wanted what was best for them though, and I was grateful that they were getting such good, specialized care.

In the next room was Ethan. He was basking in the same blue light. He had a ventilator (just in case of respiratory failure) taped to his face. It covered his mouth and nose. I couldn't see him very well. All of a sudden I felt weak in the knees. I started to tremble. All of this was too much. I could hear faint beeping from all of the other machines on the floor. I lowered myself into my wheelchair and started to cry.
"I can't see his face." I was breaking down.
The nurse started frantically removing the ventilator, the sunglasses-- "Look, Mom, he's okay. See?"  I looked again through my blurry tears. I wiped them away and...there he was. Finally. He looked very peaceful. Rodney was there beside me. Ethan was just as beautiful as Emma. They looked a lot different from each other to me. But the same little mouth. Ethan had a little Nelson dimple in his chin. The sweetest little round face. The faintest trace of hair. Such a handsome little man. I rested my hand on his tiny body and stared...at our son.

The rooms were set up to make the parents as comfortable as possible. Their names were on cute little handmade signs on the outside of the glass doors. Little cut-out letters, a ducky, a teddy bear, little bows. I thought it was a nice touch, so cute, so personal. Each room was furnished with a pleather green rocking chair/recliner, a blue couch with red, yellow and green polka dots. A breast pump was on the shelf, a mini fridge to store milk only, and a sink. The couch's seat and back cushion pulled out flat to make a sort of bed. There was a colorful privacy curtain that would hide the entire couch and chair from the glass front wall and door to the hallway. Little Beanie Babies were in the isolates, cute little themed sheets on their pads. They always had the cutest little tiny sleepers on, not those generic hospital gowns. There was a whiteboard on the wall that said, "Ethan's Room," "Emma's Room," the name of the nurse on duty, their weights, their feeding amounts.

My first impression of the NICU wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. They looked like little Precious Moments in little display cases. I was finally able to see the faces of our children, stare all day if I wanted to.

Heaven.