I was having an email conversation with a friend of mine today and he told me how lucky I am to have my son and how lucky he is to have me. He�s right; I am blessed to have the son I have, but as I told this friend, my baby is not so lucky to have me. My friend told me he is lucky because I have been a great mom. Again, he is wrong. Yes, I had my heart set on being the best mom any child has ever seen and dispelling the myth that a mom can only be as good as her mom. The only thing I have been able to do is to be a better mother than my own mother. That�s not so hard. All I have to do is not beat him (my son is 23 days old and by the time I was that age, I had already been hit), stay in his life, stay with his father and love him. All things she could never do. But I still can�t be the mother I had hoped to be. I cannot be this mother because I was too sick and weak to bring a healthy, full term baby into this world. I let myself get sick and because of that, my baby was born 3 months early. I almost died the night before he was born and I almost took him with me. But for the grace of God we are still here. I spent seven days and seven nights in the hospital. I had blood taken from me every 2 hours for the first 4 days and nights to the point that my arms were deeply bruised and swollen hard. Because of my cesarean, I was bruised from my navel all the way down to my nether region. Much of my bruising is still present. I was not left to sleep until the last night. I was not allowed to eat for 3 days and drink for 2. I had to have a catheter inserted in me to urinate and I could not shower for 3 days. I was forced to come to the realization that some of the people in my life really don�t care about me. And unlike all the other mothers, I did not get to have my baby in my room with me. I was miserable and wanted nothing more than to go home and recover. I didn�t realize how stupid and selfish I was being. I survived and I knew I would be going home soon enough. I was still in danger and I still am for the next 3 weeks, but I survived. I had no business worrying about myself when I had a baby one floor up from me in the NICU, going through so much more than I ever have. My son is still in the hospital and I have no idea when he will get to come home. I know he has to weigh at least 3 pounds and he has to �nipple� all his feedings, which means he can either eat from a breast or bottle and not some annoying tube in his nose. He has to be on room air consistently, which he is now, but he does have oxygen available in case he ever needs it. He can�t have that to come home. His vital stats have to stay healthy and consistent. Then he will get to come home. Meanwhile, he lives in a clear plastic box that sits against the back wall in an obnoxiously pink room. He is surrounded by lots of crying babies. He has a C-PAP in his nose in the event he needs an oxygen boost. He has a tube in his nose that leads to his stomach. On top of his incubator sits another tube with 15 cc�s of formula. This tube is connected to the tube in his nose and this is how he is fed. He is not held in the comforting arms of his mother or father or any other human being while he eats. Both the C-PAP and feeding tube are taped to his face. This tape pulls his cheeks and irritates his skin. He has 3 sensors on his abdomen to monitor his breathing, temperature and heart rate. These sensors are connected to wires that connect to a monitoring machine. I just thank God that none of these wires are hooked up to life support. He has a strap on his foot that takes his pulse. This strap is to change location every 8 hours, but this is not always done and now he suffers from 2 very large swollen cuts on the top of his right foot. So much for intensive care. I finally found clothes that will fit him. You see he is not just a preemie, but a micro preemie. Now he is clothed and not just laying there in a tiny diaper as he was for the first 2 � weeks. Every 12 hours, a new nurse comes on shift and she not only has my baby to take care of, but 1-3 more at the same time. My baby is not the easiest one on the NICU to take care of, so many nurses try to avoid him as much as possible, leaving him to himself most of the time. The only thing that makes his care a little more difficult than the other babies is his size. Funny, but my baby is the only one who has his care paid for unlike all the welfare babies. Some nurses let us hold him, others scream at us if we touch him too much. They say that it over stimulates him and causes him stress. I think that ignoring him and ripping tape off his face every other day and leaving him in one position for days in a row and allowing his little body to get swollen sores is what causes his stress. But what would I know? I�m just his mother. I have been there on days when his nurse was nowhere to be found and I have been there on days when is nurse was there, but was not taking care of my son. Some nurses love taking care of him and they do just that. They even touch him and talk to him. His nurse from the past 2 nights does not take care of him, nor does she talk to him. She can�t; she doesn�t speak English. So much for the communication he needs to help develop his mind. I am just thankful that he was never sick because he has to be as strong as possible because he spends a lot of time taking care of himself. After going through security, I can visit any time I want, except for the hours of 6:30-7:30 A.M. and P.M. I can bring one person in with me, but the Mexican woman that visits her baby once in a blue moon can bring her 2 kids even though the rule states one child. It is quite discomforting knowing they allow children in the NICU seeing as how they are little germ carriers. After visiting with him, I have to go home without him. It doesn�t get easier as time passes, it gets harder. I come home and I sit here and I miss him and I cry a lot. Sometimes I�ll actually rub my belly and then remember he is no longer in there where he should be. Sometimes I get a feeling in my abdomen and I grab my stomach and smile because he just kicked. Then I realize it had to be something else because he is not in there anymore. I bring a little blanket that a volunteer made him home with me so I can sleep with it just to feel close to him. I look at his pictures all day because that is all I have. On the front page of his photo album I wrote an excerpt from a song by The Cure that says, �I�ve been living so long with these pictures of you that I almost believed that they�re real.� That is how I feel and it breaks my heart. This is happening because of me. Because I was too sick to be a real mother. So, no, I am not a great mother. And for the next several weeks, I don�t get to be much of any kind of mother at all.
