So what’s it like
being a mom?
Since giving birth to the Tagalongs three weeks ago, I’ve
been congratulated and welcomed to the mommy club. But no one had asked me how
it felt to be a mom—until last week.
Truthfully, I didn’t know how to respond.
The thing is, I don’t really feel like a mom. Yes, I now
bear a C-section battle scar, and my once nicely toned abs now sport a mommy
pooch. CH now folds his tall frame into my four-door sedan, while I cruise
around town in a seven-passenger minivan. And one room in my home now houses
three cribs and a boatload of diapers, while the rest of my home is slowly
becoming littered with baby gear.
But that’s the extent of my experience with parenthood.
The sounds of baby squalls and coos don’t fill the air. The van transports car
seat bases rather than infants. And the cribs sit empty, the baby gear
untouched, save for when it’s moved out of the way. There are no babies
here—just the telltale signs of them. No, my babies are snugly nestled into
closed isolettes in the NICU, the only home they’ve known since coming into
this world.
There’s much about NICU that’s hard. The doctors speak in
a foreign language, and even the medical acronyms are multisyllabic. The
machines are bulky and complex, and they hiss and ding to the beat of their own
conductor. The babies have so many wires attached to them that it seems like they’re
more wire than baby, and they can be handled only during their half-hour care
window every three hours. Everything is cold and sterile—even the air.
But the hardest part of NICU is the deparentizing (for
lack of a better term). This isn’t done intentionally. Our NICU does a
fantastic job of trying to make this home away from home more homey for babies
and parents. Name signs and scrapbook pages go up at the bedside as soon as the
staff knows a little one is coming, and parents are encouraged to bring trinkets
to go with these decorations. Scent cloths are placed in the babies’ isolettes
so they’re surrounded by the smell of their parents (or at least of Mom). Babies
can be dressed in clothing from home once they’re free of certain wires and
have the doctors’ OK. Parents are referred to as Mom and Dad, and they’re
encouraged to be with their babies and call for updates as often as they’d
like. And caring for the babies isn’t reserved for those with medical
degrees—parents are encouraged to participate in taking temperatures, changing
diapers, giving baths, carrying out simple physical therapy exercises, holding,
and giving kangaroo care from Moment 1. Our NICU’s philosophy is that they have
our babies for only a short time—we parents have them for the rest of their
lives.
But at the end of the day, we go home and the babies do
not. CH and I used to joke that we liked kids, but we liked being able to hand
them back to their parents after a few hours. Ironically, we still do that—but
with our own kids. We spend a few hours at the hospital every day participating
in cares, and then we go home, leaving our children in the very capable hands
of their NICU nurses while we carry on with the rest of our lives. And that
feels wrong. It feels wrong to be at home doing the dishes or laundry, at the
store grocery shopping, or out grabbing some dinner while your babies are lying
in cribs across town being taken care of by someone else. It feels wrong to have
conversations about how to fit going to see your babies into your daily
schedule. It feels wrong to stare into your babies’ eyes—eyes that sometimes
look at you like, “Who are you again?”—as you kiss them good-bye (not good night) and tell them
you’ll see them tomorrow. At the very least, it makes you feel like you live a very,
very busy life. At the very worst, it makes you feel like you’re not a
parent—just a visitor. And that’s a hard feeling to wrestle with. The mommy
guilt starts early when your babies are in NICU.
Thankfully, NICU is only temporary. Before I know it,
I’ll be running around after three little ones in a crazy, sleep-deprived
stupor. On some days, I’m sure I’ll long for the days of NICU—at least the part
that involved handing my babies over to someone else for a few hours. Until
then, I’ll bide my time, trusting that what I’m doing is enough and doing the
best I can to help my babies recognize me as Mom and understand just how much I
love them.
