I’m doing things a little backward, I guess, since I’m not starting at the beginning, by any means. This is hard for me to write, if I’m being honest; Isla’s birth was traumatic for me, and I still struggle when driving near the hospital she was born in. But, as the saying goes, “dive in headfirst”? “Dive in with both feet”? OK, I don’t actually remember how the saying goes.

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Isla came very suddenly, and very early. On Tuesday December 5th, I got home from work shortly after 7:30 pm, ate dinner, and then started working on a paper that was due the following day. I was 35 weeks and 1 day pregnant with our littlest babe. Suddenly, I felt wet – like I had gotten my period and forgotten a tampon or pad – and went to the bathroom to investigate. I was steadily dripping water (amniotic fluid*), and called my friend – whose amniotic sac had started leaking during her second trimester – to ask her some questions.

“Hey! So, I think my sac is leaking… when you went in, what did they do? Did it hurt when they fixed the leak?”

YEAH, I thought they were going to patch my amniotic sac. It turns out that I am not, in fact, a tire. THANK GOODNESS for her, because she went along with my delusions and said that she was sure they’d just stop the leak and send me on my merry way, but I should go to the hospital ASAP to get it done.

So I packed my backpack… with my laptop, my textbooks, my binder, and my notes… and a sweater. That was it. I packed LITERALLY NOTHING for a hospital stay, and definitely nothing for a baby. Travis packed William into the car, and we drove the 15 minutes to the hospital.

When we arrived, I waddled into the ER (even with a pad on, it was a DISGUSTING feeling… also, I was majorly pregnant), and they directed me to the FBU (“sorry, where?” – me, because I hadn’t registered, yet, because I still had five weeks until my planned repeat c-section).

“The Family Birthing Unit,” the triage nurse responded. I took maybe 10 steps, and sheepishly went back to triage, asking if they could take me over in a wheelchair, because it was so uncomfortable to walk.

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So my water had broken (who knew? Turns out my friend and her husband, who had arrived at the hospital less than 10 minutes after me, even though she, too, was in her last trimester of pregnancy. Get yourself some friends like them!) and I called Travis to come in, but he couldn’t bring William in because of the FBU’s restrictions. Go figure. Again, yay, friends!! They hung out with William while Travis and I spoke to the FBU nurses.

Me, still being naive (blatantly ignorant? You decide), asked if there was a way to prevent the fluid from leaking. The response?

“You’re having this baby tonight.” 

The nurses were keeping track of bub’s movements and heart rate, which were totally normal, thank goodness; she was by no means in distress. They had no idea why (we still don’t know why) my water broke. I was 24, healthy, active, and extremely low risk.

I was given the option of having a c-section within a few hours, or I could keep her in utero a bit longer so she could continue developing where she was comfy. I know that in ideal situations, in utero would’ve been my pick, hands down. But birth doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and the risk of infection combined with my Strep B status being unknown. I also wouldn’t have been allowed to eat until 6 pm the next day because I was in constant surgery prep mode. I am unpleasant (vastly understated) when I am hungry; hungry and sitting on a soaked pad? Bad combination. My biggest concern was her lungs – I knew that lungs had just finished developing, but 34- and 35-week olds often struggle to breathe on their own. However, a few days of in utero lung development was too risky given that every second left her susceptible to infection, so I opted for the c-section that night.

*insert a bunch of frantic organizing with grandparents, previously mentioned friends, and husband here*

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Despite the Caesarean being an emergency, I was much calmer than I had been during my first section. I knew what to expect this time around, which was relieving, to say the least. However, I still had concerns; my biggest fear was that the baby’s lungs would be underdeveloped, and that she would need to be hospitalized.

When she was born, she was nameless, and she was faceless to me – she was whisked to a side room to check her stats and overall health. She was big – at a whopping 6 lbs 12 oz, she was larger than all the other babies in both the FBU and the NICU – even though she was only 35 weeks and 2 days gestation. Her lungs, unfortunately, were not as strong as they needed to be for her little body. She wasn’t able to breathe at 100% room air – she was only able to do 86%, then 98%, then 92%. She was put into an incubator, and Travis, without even consulting me (thankfully!) followed her and the attending pediatrician to the NICU.

I didn’t get to see her in person for over 24 hours, and my heart felt like it was detached from my body and ripped into three pieces. William was with his grandparents, and though I knew he was safe and taken care of, I missed him so much. Travis was back and forth between the NICU, my hospital room, and his parents’ house to see William. The baby was on the other side of the hospital, but to my bedridden body, that may as well have been the other end of the world. I had to hand-express colostrum into tiny tubes, terrified that my little bub wouldn’t be able to latch because she was currently getting her nutrients through an IV, and couldn’t be fed anything yet.

My first visit with little Isla James was through two six-inch-wide holes. I hadn’t had my gel nails removed, so I couldn’t even touch her with my bare hands. Thin nitrile gloves reaffirmed the boundary that her incubator established – I yearned to hold her tiny body in my arms, but the plastic machine forbade it. Her oxygen tube was no longer necessary, since within 24 hours, she started breathing 100% room air (yay!), but she still needed precautionary antibiotics, since we didn’t know if I had Strep B.

At my second visit, our NICU nurse was appalled that no one had let me hold her yet, so she told me to take off my gloves (I had shellac on, so no chance of peeling polish, anyway) and handed me the baby. Our nurse also thought trying to breastfeed her would be a good idea (she had started bottle feeding the colostrum I had been pumping and topped up with formula), so we attempted, and it went remarkably well! She had a really good latch, and, even though she was pre-term, she was big, so that made latching less challenging. I think it also helped that I had been breastfeeding her big brother until he was 2.5 – he weaned only four months before she was born – and my body was accustomed to making milk. We found out quickly that she liked to fall asleep while eating, and did NOT like to be woken up.

Isla had to be weighed before and after each feeding – which were every three hours to the dot – in order to determine how much she had eaten. Her diapers also had to be counted and weighed. The NICU is intensely organized – it has to be to ensure the babies are as healthy as possible before they’re discharged – and it threw me for a loop. The NICU team that did their rounds every morning at 9 am wanted Isla to be eating 8 ml of breastmilk per kilo of her weight – that’s a lot for a little bean! We struggled at first to make that work: I had to nurse her and then pump, because she really didn’t like the formula once she tried breastmilk.

Despite latching well, Isla didn’t start eating the necessary ratio until Friday (she was three days old, but it seemed like forever), and when she was weighed each morning before the doctors’ rounds, she still hadn’t gained – or even plateaued. For most babies, this is absolutely normal. For Isla, an otherwise healthy (although preterm) little bub, this was a make-or-break as to whether or not she could go home. The NICU is easily the safest place for a new little human to be, but there was an MRSA outbreak in another NICU pod, which increased the risk of anyone who’d been in shared quarters (caregivers, visitors, and nurses alike) getting MRSA and passing it onto any of the NICU babies. 2017-2018 flu season was also one of the worst flu seasons to date, with both Influenzas A and B making their rounds, and visitors were still allowed without a flu shot (cue: ANXIETY) as long as they wore a mask.

For me, each day in the NICU felt like an increased risk of being exposed to other patients’ illnesses – the NICU is still in the main hospital, so I still had to be in common areas with people who may have had the flu. The doctors could tell I was a wreck, and pointed out that discharge is “a one-way ticket” – if she had to return to the hospital, she’d be in Peds, which is a lung-illness-infested place in December. While I understood their point, it definitely didn’t make me feel better. Nowhere was safe enough for her, except for in my uterus, but that, too, was a one-way ticket.

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Content warning: anxiety, depression, disordered eating, weight loss

Isla ate well, and slept well, and pooped and peed often, but the structured nature of the NICU had me extremely anxious, and the isolation of the pod overlooking the hospital parking lot and a Tim Horton’s had me depressed. I was exhausted, and I missed the rest of our little family; Travis was visiting during the day, but nights were spent with William, and I refused to leave the hospital without Isla. William had a cold, so he couldn’t visit; we used video chat so I could see his little (and v snotty) face. He cried when Grandma read him “Llama Llama Misses Mama”; I cried when I heard that. I cried when I typed it. It broke my heart, and it still does.

I all but stopped eating; whether I ate or not, I was nauseated, but food also made me have an urge to suddenly vomit. I forced myself to eat oatmeal, apples, and bananas (thanks to the Ronald McDonald House for having free amenities for NICU parents) because that was all my stomach could take, but I still lost almost five pounds between Isla’s birth and her discharge six days later. I was terrified that my loss of appetite would adversely affect my milk supply (thankfully, it did not), which just exacerbated my anxiety, making it even more difficult to stomach anything. I got so shaky from the combination of anxiety and not eating, that I couldn’t even lift Isla on my own for fear of dropping her. I bawled my eyes out to the nurses, who were so wonderful and understanding. They carried her to me so I could feed her, burp her, and cuddle her, and then they would put her back in her incubator-turned-acrylic-bassinet.

I thought (hoped?) that being at home – well, at my in-laws, who offered to put us up during my recovery and beyond (they’re amazing!!!) – would minimize my anxiety symptoms; this was certainly not the case. I should point out that I knew these feelings wouldn’t completely disappear, since I also have generalized depression and anxiety, as well as PTSD, but I thought my anxieties might at least turn into something a little more rational – they didn’t.

After six long days in the NICU, on December 12th, 2017, we got to bring our beautiful little Isla James home. 

Isla continued to eat well, and sleep well, and poop and pee often, but despite transitioning to an “on demand” schedule, I was still an absolute wreck. I was still exhausted, of course, but regardless of how much I napped, I was terrified that Isla would get sick or hurt. I had this irrational, constant fear that she would fall. I limited myself in terms of carrying her – I sat down with her almost all of the time, except to get up to change her diaper. I refused to go near the stairs with her, and was mostly okay if she had to go up or downstairs only when she was being carried (by someone else) in her car seat.

After a week of these thoughts attacking my mind (and not decreasing), I told my doctor, who promptly prescribed me escitalopram (Cipralex). A week after that, on Christmas Day, Travis carried Isla downstairs (without a car seat!) and I held her outside so she could witness her first snowfall. However, negative thoughts started to pop up, so after about 15 minutes, we went back inside.

Once I was regularly on the full prescribed amount, the intrusive thoughts I was having disappeared, and I became a functional parent. I had both kids on my own during workdays once Isla was seven weeks old, and, despite spending most of our time inside (a newborn getting the flu is *not* an irrational fear, and I do not trust people to stay away from my baby), I didn’t have any “write off” days (days when I do the bare minimum because I am depressed – William and I wear jammies all day, watch shows, do puzzles, and eat food, and that’s pretty much it), which I had when I wasn’t medicated about once a month. On days when I forgot to take my medication, or I took it late, I collapsed into tears, unable and unwilling to do anything. Being prescribed medication was seriously helpful when all of the other coping mechanisms I used previously had failed.

I am eternally grateful that I have a doctor who takes me seriously (I know that this isn’t always the case), and that I have a wonderful support system of family and friends who are knowledgeable about – and advocate for – mental health wellness. I’m glad I got the medication I needed to help my brain produce the chemicals it was missing. Ultimately, however, I am relieved, thankful, and elated that the world feels safer for my baby girl, and my arms are the safest place of all.