Get Life: My experience having a micro-preemie.

Countless days of taking tests and seeing only one line can be incredibly heartbreaking - especially to those who have been wanting to start a family for years. When you’re going through infertility and you finally have that second stripe on the pregnancy test, you want to jump for joy that something stuck. You start counting each week and praying you get a heartbeat or make it to13 weeks so you can start announcing to the world you’re expecting. However, for me, I was nervous throughout my pregnancy as I wanted to have a baby so badly that I was overly cautious. I read article after article to prepare myself for any potential scenario or every twinge I felt when she moved in my body. It became an obsession to learn as much as I could to make sure I had a full-term pregnancy.

Then the unexpected came - I gave birth to my daughter at 25 weeks and she weighed roughly 1 pound, a micro-preemie. I had heard of preemies, but never a micro-preemie until she was born.

This is my daughter when she was only 2 days old.

You might be asking what happened to cause the premature birth, and quite honestly, my day started as a typical work day. I recall sitting in a productive meeting with a few colleagues when I felt something was a bit off. I basically felt a dull pain/ache (on and off) below my belly while sitting in the conference room. It never occured to me it could be contractions as I was only 24 weeks at the time. Driving home from work, I felt it again and continued to ignore the feeling (I chalked it to a new pregnancy symptom), but knew something seemed off. When I got home I used the restroom (like most pregnant women - I was using the restroom alot) and notice a brown string-like substance (sorry for the description and potential visual). Thanks to the countless articles I read, I believed it was my mucus plug. At this point, I came out of the bathroom to find my husband sitting at the kitchen counter while my mom was cooking dinner for us. I didn’t want to worry my mom so I whispered to my husband that I think I need to go to the hospital just to be on the safe side. My mom had bionic ears and immediately turned to ask what was wrong. Without fighting her, we all packed into the car and headed to the nearest hospital. Once we got there, I was immediately taken to the maternity ward to be checked on. The doctor did a quick ultrasound and found that the baby’s heartbeat was healthy, everything looked good. She then said she will do a physical check to make sure everything was indeed fine. To my very surprise, less than 5 minutes of her checking, she jumped up and told me, “Okay, you’re about 4 cm dilated. We need to get you to the main hospital now.” As she whipped open the curtains that separated me from my husband and mom, my husband looked at my face and then back at the doctor. The doctor explained what was going to happen (which included medicinal injections to help stop the dilation and getting me prepared for a ride) and within 15 minutes, I was being wheeled to the a helicopter to be life-flighted to the main hospital (roughly 20 miles away towards midtown) for additional care. One week later, my daughter was born.

This was how tiny she was when I finally got to hold her during kangaroo care.

Throughout this time, I didn’t have a chance to ask a ton of questions but one thing was for sure, I was going to do whatever is necessary to make sure the baby was alive and healthy. I started to make a mental list of what I need to do to make sure I stayed calm to ensure I don’t cause my body (physically and mentally) any additional stress. The goal was to keep her in as long as possible to give her a fighting chance to continue developing her lungs, brain, and other organs.

1.I stopped reading articles and fighting the urge to Google information.

As much as I was reading during my pregnancy and wanting to have information, this was a moment that I couldn’t control. It’s good to be educated but it’s also another thing to being overloaded with information. I had to trust my body, find time to ask a ton of questions, and trust the experts to give me options. Otherwise, my “research” will have my mental state go down a dark path. From the time I was in the helicopter, I told myself - no more reading. Now is the time to be in the moment and take each minute, hour, day as it comes.

2.Keep positive.

This is understandably the hardest thing anyone can do when faced with a medical challenge. However, I was determined to have a positive outlook because it’s not just about me anymore. It’s about our soon to be family of three. I wanted to make sure I start off on the right footing (even though it felt a bit late…but better late than never) and keep a positive mindset. My husband was supportive and just made sure I was not alone in my thoughts. I made sure I surrounded myself with positive conversations (this included me ensuring my family knew where I stood if they were to visit me in the hospital).

3.Ask questions.

While I didn’t get much of an opportunity to ask questions initially, going forward I made sure to make a mental list of questions to ask doctors and nurses to ensure I knew each step that needs to happen for me and the baby. This is important as you are now advocating for yourself and the human inside of you. If you’re going through the same experience, don’t worry if you don’t know what questions to ask (I sure as heck didn’t either, but once I need to I did. Starting with “What’s happening? Why?” is a good way to get questions flowing).

4.Build a relationship with the hospital staff.

Remember what I said about trust earlier? From the time I was in the hospital room to delivery room to spending months in the NICU, I made sure I got to know the medical team personally. They do not get enough credit for what they do and I wanted to know who was going to care for me and my baby. My husband and I made it a point that we give them the respect for their profession (the hospital is not a hotel stay - they are not conceirge! The amount of people we witness that treat hospital and staff as their own beck and call was unbelievable!) but also have to remember they are human beings as well. I know not everyone will have the same experience as we did but I can honestly say, from delivery to time in NICU, we had an amazing team of doctors and nurses that made a serious situation much more pleasant. Another helpful moment - we knew all the nurses and doctors for all shifts since we were in the NICU morning, noon and night. We made sure to know when shift changes so we knew when, who, and where people were assigned. While our daughter had two main nurses that were responsible for her care, there would be times when she had a rotation of nurses. We wanted them to know us and vice versa. We worked as a team together to make sure our baby was able to get discharged and go home with us. To this day (7 years later), we still either keep in contact (every now and then) or randomly running into staff members that remember us.

5.Each day is a new day.

As cliche as that sounds, I had to remember each day will bring on new challenges as we embark on NICU journey. We practically lived in the NICU for roughly 4 months and the things I saw, heard, and dealt with was different each day. I did not have time to stew on what happened the day before or what could happen the next day, I should just focus on what’s happening that particular day and deal with whatever the new issue is at that moment and time. I made sure I kept to a routine and be adaptable to whatever a situation were to arise.

All in all, we were fortunate enough that after those months, we were able to take our baby home and watch her grow. While I do not wish for anyone to go through what we went through, I am grateful we had that experience as it taught me a ton about being mentally strong to ensure our daughter was as healthy as possible.

Her first minutes coming home from the NICU.

I’ll share other things I learned in the NICU with a micro-preemie in another blog but for now, to those that are going through or have gone through the same situation, many hugs to you and sending positive vibes your way.