Dear NICU Nurse

This post was inspired by chat I had on Twitter this morning with A Party of Seven a wonderful blogger who just so happens to be a NICU nurse.

Dear NICU Nurse,

I am in awe of you. As I watch your fingers dance over my baby's tiny body, deftly moving between the wires and the tubes, I give thanks for your skill and your expertise. Ignoring the beeps, watching intently the movements my baby makes, the colour of his skin, you make sure my baby is safe. As you silently, carefully measure such tiny amounts of medication, checking each one off with a colleague, I marvel at how calm and methodical you are.

I appreciate when you come to me in the morning to give me an update. When you quietly whisper in my ear that the consultant is considering a medication change, a procedure, the addition of fortifier, giving me a heads up to the discussion that is to come. When you leave me a little note on a piece of hand towel, or a leaflet about a complication. 

I thank you for the way you carefully teach me to give breastmilk to my baby in a syringe. You teach me how to wash his impossibly small eyes with a cotton wool ball that in comparison looks like a giant cumulonimbus cloud. You show me how to lift his bottom up to change his nappy, but not too far lest some sausage like poo should shoot across the incubator hitting the perspex barrier to the outside world.

You patiently teach me about developmental care, explaining why you must cover his incubator with this giant cloth. You keep the nicest sheets, the ones with cat and the fiddle on them, tucked away so that I can make his cot look homely. You make sure his clothes are kept separate and not mixed with the hospital laundry, never to be seen again.

But I resent you. Try as I might to appreciate your skill, your kindness, your empathy, your experience, there are times when I could push you out of the way and scratch your eyes out. You are not trying to do my job, my logical self knows I am my baby's mother, but my heart sees you as competition. You are standing between me and my baby. You tell me when I can touch and I cannot. When I can see him and when I cannot. When I can hold him and when I cannot. You are the gatekeeper.

Today, though, you have come to me. You have touched my shoulder and whispered in my ear. Today, you see, you have given me the news I have been waiting for. It's time. It's time for my baby to come home. He will not be yours anymore, but you know that he has never been yours, you have done your work until the time that he becomes ready to be mine, to be ours, to be at home with us, his family.

And I see you now, for the caring professional that you are. You were never trying to be me. You were being you.

And I thank you.