NICUs

I spent the morning in the NICU on Tuesday. Not a place I have ever spent time until the other day. It is another world. Full of beeping monitors that sound out life altering news pretty much every single second. It is a surreal place. It is a place where so much healing occurs while fear of death and actual death lurks in every random corner. We don’t talk about that, we don’t mention it. We say things instead like, “brave, fighter and against the odds.” But they are all stanzas to cheat death.

Little tiny less than 2 pound Fae was born at 27 weeks. Her momma, severely pre-eclamptic, her blood pressure so high it threatened the life of them both. She had to come early, or not at all. It was dire, terrifying and there were other complications for mom that have made this birth, her last.

So there is a gravity to the NICU. There is a seriousness that pervades, where laughter, at first, feels almost inappropriate. And that is what I felt when I walked down the corridor to her room…the line we all walk between living and dying.

She was awake when we got there, this tiny, frail, tenacious human being whose start in this life feels unfairly hard and painful. All the tubes and wires, that sustain her. All I could think about is how very much I would want all those things off of me…like almost incited a panic in me. But, without the tubes and hoses and beeping monitors, she would never make it.

It has been a few weeks now and she is doing well. Her mom the best mom ever. Her mom the only one I know tough enough and tender enough to handle this kind of thing. A woman who has already walked a hard path in life, who found her way into the light, after living with such dreadful darkness for so very long. She wrote a book about it…she too, is a living, breathing miracle.

I read the tiny one a book about fairies and little things we don’t take the time to notice in our busy, everyday lives. She was laying on her momma’s chest while I read. It was the most normal thing in the most un-normal environment. But for a couple of minutes, the three of us claimed the peace that can only be found when there is a sleeping angel in the room. Momma rocked her in the chair, navigating all the tubes and wires, and allowed that little, tiny girl to listen to the loving beat of her mom’s heart while she was cradled, adored and loved. I was in awe. Proving to me once more, you never, ever know how strong you are, until you live another day. And sometimes, those days ask so very much from you, do so very much to you that it all seems unbearable.

But in all life, there are gifts and tragedies. And miracles. So many miracles. And she is that. My friend, a tiny miracle manufacturer. And now the two of them, alone in this great big world, begin to navigate that amazing bond of mother and daughter. Their start harder than it should be, but we are so grateful for this start.

I felt almost guilty for my own childbearing. It was not easy but it was not like this. No NICUs, no doctors, no wires, tubes and machines. It was a wholly different experience for me.

As I sat and watched my friend, love, mother and hold her tiny girl, I was overcome with the ask that is motherhood. We, often, lose our own lives to become this mother thing. We gladly give up the life that is ours and begin this path that requires so much sacrifice, so much pain, so much strength and love and really, everything we are. We do not get to walk away when it is hard, or painful. And my experience of motherhood is that it is both always. I live for my kids in so many ways, healthy and unhealthy. Their arrival forever changed me, turning me from woman into mother and the alteration irreversible.

But I can see the bond between this tiny girl and her mother blossoming. My friends patient reverence. Her attendance, standing beside the life supporting incubator, learning medical things that she never, ever wanted or needed to know, until dear little Fae’s arrival.

We do not get the kids we think we will. We are not the mothers we think we will be either. I wish I could have been better at mothering. I felt all the things I took for granted sitting in that NICU. I felt all the things that came easy and were just normal for me and my kids. I felt the poking jabs of my own memory for things that I made a big deal about when they were, in fact, not big deals at all. My friend and her baby are mired in the big deals where every moment is precious and precarious. It was honestly embarrassing if even just to myself.

I marveled at this tiny duo, this mother and child. The love was palpable. It was real. It was in the room and all it was the forcefield that kept the doom cowering just outside. Reality pervades but so does hope and faith and attention and love. Being there was like being bathed in it. I felt warm and safe and cared for even though it had nothing to do with me. The nurses attention and care, real, loving and committed. They took their jobs so seriously but with a loving laughter and grace that can only be learned on life’s jagged edge.

When I got to my car I bawled like a tiny infant myself. So overwhelmed with all I felt and all my friend had already endured to arrive at this place. In complete admiration for who she has become to arrive at this mother place. Knowing, even though I know she doubts, her ability to walk this path, to do the deal, to rise to this very hard task of being this mother.

Sometimes life brings you the biggest lessons in the tiniest packages. And she, little Fae, is all of that. She is delicate but strong, she is tough but tender. She is a tiny little miracle who is enduring so very much just to remain. So if you have some spare prayers, please offer them up for this mother and child and all the other mothers and their tiny miracles. There is a whole floor of them, and those floors are everywhere. Mothers fighting for the chance to give themselves away completely, and tiny miraculous little children who, fight just as hard to return the love provided. It is as hard to watch as it is beautiful…another exquisite example of life providing another opportunity to break you and heal you at the very same time.

Again, still…