Julian's Birth Story // Part 2

Last week, I shared with you the "first part" of Julian's birth story, so I have the rest of it now for you to read.

I gave birth on a Monday, and for 2 nights I walked laps around the maternity ward so that I could leave that hospital and finally get to hold my baby. People visited me and brought me gifts, and we chatted about what was going on with Julian. I pumped my breast milk and had family, who were going to visit Julian, deliver it to him in coolers.

When I finally got to see him in the NICU, I was so excited and nervous. I opened the doors to the NICU and I knew right away that he was in the first incubator by the door. There was a nurse at his station, and when I walked over, she asked me if I was his mom, and I immediately started crying and laughing at the same time. They let me take him out of the incubator and insisted that I try to nurse immediately and that I hold him against my bare skin. They had to come tell me to put him back into the incubator several times because I wanted to hold him day and night.

That night, Dom drove me home so I could stay in my own bed. I opened the door to my room, and broke down. My parents had set everything up while I was at the hospital. It looked like there should have been a baby in the room, but there was just me and Dom. How was I going to sleep at home while Julian was struggling to breathe in an incubator, in a hospital 30 minutes away from me?

Well, I did. I slept that night in my bed, but for the next 10 nights I slept in a chair by his side. They told us 3 times that he would be going home the next day. Each of those times, a doctor came to us and told us “not today”, and each time it made us even angrier. Finally, I was so exhausted physically and emotionally that I slept at home, and I felt guilty about it the whole night. 

I woke up the next morning, and I could feel that it was going to be a great day. I made sure Dom came with me to the hospital, and I made sure we had the car seat with us. We took our time getting to the hospital because we were still feeling like the day that we brought Julian home would never come. We were about a block away from the hospital when a nurse called us and with so much excitement in her voice, she said “Are you coming here today? Julian is going to be able to go home!”

It felt like years passed between the time that we entered the hospital and the time that we finally were discharged. Paperwork and questions and last minute tips and information were the only things in our way of taking our little guy home. We were both so happy and excited, but so nervous because we would have to take care of him on our own. Without help from nurses.
I had so many fears and worries, but I never voiced any of them because the thought of finally being this guy’s mama overshadowed all of them. And it turns out that none of those fears mattered because he was amazing. 

I still feel like someone cheated me out of the experience that I imagined. When I think about it, talk about it, and write about it, tears come to my eyes because I can still feel all of my fear and anxiety from the time I knew I would have a c-section to the time I brought Julian home. My labor didn’t last a few hours or days. It lasted for weeks because there is no labor greater than what your heart goes through when it is feeling a million emotions and they’re all contradicting eachother.

In the scheme of things, I’m so lucky. There were babies in the NICU that were there for months, and there were probably some there that didn’t even make it. There are mothers that have never been able to hold the babies that they create, and mothers that never get to take their babies home with them. I know I’m lucky to have such a healthy, smart, funny, and loving 18 month old sleeping soundly in his crib right now. We were blessed with a happy ending, and I am so grateful for that.

But next time, I hope I get a happy beginning, too.