Slumpy

11:20p.m. I'm sitting in a hallway. It's quiet. Too quiet for a hospital. Lights are dimmed. Floors are polished shiny and new. The large rectangle fluorescent lights reflect back down the long corridors. I'm alone. To my right is the labor and delivery ward. I hear nurses quietly clicking away at computers. Every here and there I can hear a baby fuss. What a beautiful world. If they only knew what was merely feet away. One hallway over and a matter of yards is the troll lurking under the bridge. If that baby doesn't breathe just so, or nurse well, weighs too little, or doesn't respond according to the charts and graphs, they too will find the lurking troll. I ran so hard and so far from this hospital scene while I was pregnant. And here I am. Like everything else in my life I am being taught to balance two separate worlds.

Things are slow. And this part is frustrating. It's like we started all over when we moved to room C. In room C, when the doctor writes orders to feed the baby every three hours, that could mean two or four. Sometimes the baby has to cry and cry in hunger. It pisses his mama off. The nurse the first night was hell. She handled him roughly. It's little things...when you have to poke his heel with a needle to get a drop of blood to test his sugar for example, most nurses do it quickly; alcohol wipe, poke, gather drop of blood, gauze pad over heel with pressure, then bandaid. This lady wiped and scrubbed at his heel with the alcohol pad, pushed the needle way to hard into his skin and held it too long, then squeezed and squeezed to get way more blood than needed...etc etc. By the time she was done I was crying because I couldn't hit her, and Ollie was screaming. By now his feeding was running 30 minutes behind, and he's rooting into my shirt for food, yet I am still told by speech that he can't eat because he doesn't have stamina. I hold myself back from telling them all to go places they have never heard of. Finally she hooks up a vile of my milk to his nose tube...and he continues to cry. After 15-20 minutes of fussing I decide hes probably poopy and put him in his crib to change him-the mattress is soaked. I look around, the feeding tube is laying in his bed. 2 ounces of breastmilk have now fed his mattress. I hate room C. I hate this nurse. Other babies are screaming and another nurse tells one she'll just have to cry it out. How sad.

Im so sick of this. It feels like jail. I can't figure out what me or Ollie did wrong to deserve this. I just want to go home. People point out how healthy he is, or that the mom's of preemies will be here for months. People say I should be more grateful or get more sleep. People say he's never going to remember this anyway and I should leave his side. I'm sick of people. Don't tell me he doesn't remember, when he hears an alcohol pad being opened and pulls his feet up to his belly under his blankets. He knows the needle is next. Don't tell me I should be more grateful or get more sleep, when my baby is being treated that way...Don't tell me to leave his side. It should never have been this way. I will not leave him, and I probably won't get any sleep til we are home. And that is my choice.

Today I tried to feed him. It was awful. I can only feed him every other feeding because the speech lady only sees him once a day, usually when he's exhausted and not hungry because he just finished food two hours before. they don't let him wait long enough to get hungry. He was frustrated. Wires kept tangling us both up. He was screaming into my chest. We only had twenty minutes to get a full feed in, per the speech peoples orders-so he doesn't get tired. Nurses were staring at me. The clock was ticking. The lights were blaring. I finally ripped the monitor out of the plug and threw it. I started crying. I can't try again til 430pm. This is so messed up. Babies don't measure how much they eat and time it exactly every three hours to start. By the time he's done it's only a two hour break before they expect him to get hungry again. I don't even eat that much for crying out loud. His nurse mentioned today that he may have to go home with a feeding tube. Im not happy. This isn't fun. It's getting ridiculous.

His nurse finally talked to the doctor on call and had them order his heel pricks down to every other feed...so once every 6 hours instead of 3. His sugars have been wonderful. They are putting rice cereal in his feeds and it helps him keep his sugar up. He's off the steroids, his PICC line (IV) has been down to 1 for 36 hours now. It will get pulled tomorrow. I have to find out a plan with the doc. I can't expect him to wake up two hours after he just had nearly 3 oz of food with cereal in it, and be hungry enough to eat. There has to be a happy medium here. When I talked to the doc yesterday, she said to expect nearly 2 more weeks of this. I feel like I am dying. I can't stand this anymore. I want to stand up and walk out with him. I want to stab nurses with needles so they can see how it feels. I want to yell at everyone I see. I don't want to calm down anymore. This is the part where I feel pushed to far, and I drop atomic bombs burning bridges and walk away in flames with both middle fingers raised. Yeah, my fingers are twitchin alright.

My poor nurse today is a saint. I yell and throw monitors and she just takes them apart and gives me space. She sees me crying and comes and hugs me and I sob all over her. She tells me to forget what stupid speech says and feed my baby. The next feeding time comes and he's asleep and takes it by tube. It feels never ending. I know it's the darkest part before the dawn. I know he's about to turn. His doc is in tomorrow and we will make big strides. Or at least have a plan. But today, I feel frustrated and weepy and angry. I'm tired of staring at the polished floors and hearing the new baby song.

I want to go home with my baby...and climb into my bed. I want to shut the door on the world and hold him for hours, with no monitors, no nurses saying "its time", no tubes and wires, just me and him breathing together, nuzzled into bed...sleeping if we want to, eating when we want to, visiting all of his big brothers at once instead of one at a time. Yeah, I want to go home.