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Sarah and JP, the twins' mom and dad, have spent countless hours in the NIC-U since their little girls were born. And their fondest wish, at the end of visiting hours every day, has been that their little girls could come home with them.
This morning, Sarah was asked to bring Amelia's car seat/child carrier with her to the hospital. And today she received instruction on how to secure the little ones in their car seats and safely transport them home. Which, for Amelia, will be tomorrow or Friday.
From the beginning, we understood that it would likely be this way. That Amelia would be released to come home while Layla would be kept in the NIC-U for a slightly longer stay.
It's hard to describe how this has weighed on our hearts and on Sarah's. But the rules are clear: once released, Amelia cannot be brought back to the NIC-U and Sarah and JP will have to divide their time, as best they can, between home and the hospital.
(When asked the reason for this policy, the Nurse Practitioner explained that it was for Amelia's safety. That being brought in and out of the hospital would greatly increase her risk of exposure to chilling cold and potentially deadly infection.)
The staff did their best to console Sarah, regarding this prospect, assuring her that Layla would be well cared for and would likely join her sister at home near the end of next week.
Then Sarah related a story which I think may suggest another perspective for all of us.
She made the observation that the NIC-U always seemed to be crowded with parents taking care of their newborns, then asked if I recalled seeing an Isolette that seemed a bit out of the mainstream of unit activity.
That one, she had noticed, never seemed to have anyone but staff around it. The occasional exception was an older woman, whom Sarah and JP took to be the baby's grandmother.
And the baby always seemed to be crying. While her own little ones nursed and slept, this baby was always crying.
Then she overheard a staff member refer to "the morphine baby." And soon after learned that the older woman, that she and JP had sometimes seen with the child, was a hospital volunteer.
Confronted with only the basic facts, we tend to supply the missing details from what we've heard or imagined of lives outside our own. And we do it as a means of coping with what we have before us.
Sometimes that tendency can lead us pretty far afield, so that what we imagine bears only the faintest resemblence to reality.
But in this case, I think that what Sarah has surmised may unfortunately be correct: that this baby was born addicted and that her mother is either in jail or de-tox or back out on the street looking for her next fix.
And that, with the exception of hospital staff and the one volunteer, this child has been left alone in the world to suffer the constant and excruciating pain of her own withdrawal.
In this life, we never really know what our prospects might be, going forward. But some, like Sarah's little twins, will likely be going home within a reasonably short time, to live with families that have loved and cared for them since their lives first began.
For others, that sort of life may be little more than a ragged dream, glimpsed through a pain not of their own making and not within their own small powers to comprehend or heal.
LPK
LiveJournal
2.1.2012
This morning, Sarah was asked to bring Amelia's car seat/child carrier with her to the hospital. And today she received instruction on how to secure the little ones in their car seats and safely transport them home. Which, for Amelia, will be tomorrow or Friday.
From the beginning, we understood that it would likely be this way. That Amelia would be released to come home while Layla would be kept in the NIC-U for a slightly longer stay.
It's hard to describe how this has weighed on our hearts and on Sarah's. But the rules are clear: once released, Amelia cannot be brought back to the NIC-U and Sarah and JP will have to divide their time, as best they can, between home and the hospital.
(When asked the reason for this policy, the Nurse Practitioner explained that it was for Amelia's safety. That being brought in and out of the hospital would greatly increase her risk of exposure to chilling cold and potentially deadly infection.)
The staff did their best to console Sarah, regarding this prospect, assuring her that Layla would be well cared for and would likely join her sister at home near the end of next week.
Then Sarah related a story which I think may suggest another perspective for all of us.
She made the observation that the NIC-U always seemed to be crowded with parents taking care of their newborns, then asked if I recalled seeing an Isolette that seemed a bit out of the mainstream of unit activity.
That one, she had noticed, never seemed to have anyone but staff around it. The occasional exception was an older woman, whom Sarah and JP took to be the baby's grandmother.
And the baby always seemed to be crying. While her own little ones nursed and slept, this baby was always crying.
Then she overheard a staff member refer to "the morphine baby." And soon after learned that the older woman, that she and JP had sometimes seen with the child, was a hospital volunteer.
Confronted with only the basic facts, we tend to supply the missing details from what we've heard or imagined of lives outside our own. And we do it as a means of coping with what we have before us.
Sometimes that tendency can lead us pretty far afield, so that what we imagine bears only the faintest resemblence to reality.
But in this case, I think that what Sarah has surmised may unfortunately be correct: that this baby was born addicted and that her mother is either in jail or de-tox or back out on the street looking for her next fix.
And that, with the exception of hospital staff and the one volunteer, this child has been left alone in the world to suffer the constant and excruciating pain of her own withdrawal.
In this life, we never really know what our prospects might be, going forward. But some, like Sarah's little twins, will likely be going home within a reasonably short time, to live with families that have loved and cared for them since their lives first began.
For others, that sort of life may be little more than a ragged dream, glimpsed through a pain not of their own making and not within their own small powers to comprehend or heal.
LPK
LiveJournal
2.1.2012
