In an e-mail to my mother last week, Kathy pointed out that the demands on our time are unusual. Together we visit the hospital daily, and she keeps intimate relations with a breast pump eight times a day. Our lives now orbit around these circumstances. Amid them, we also continue to prepare our apartment for Gabriel’s arrival here. But Mom was having none of Kathy’s excuses. “It would also be difficult if you had brought him home,” she replied.
I try to imagine what this experience would have been like, how it might be were Gabriel still to be born the second week of August. I can’t. For most of the past month, we have been spectators at the care of our son. His doctors have decided how much and how often he should eat, deciphered when he has been unhappy or ill; his nurses have fed him, changed his diapers, given him baths, consoled him when he’s been upset. We have been allowed to join in some things, such as changing diapers and giving baths, but always that verb allowed has enveloped us with the scent of rotten eggs. 
That Gabriel lives in an incubator (see image, right) has made the feeling more acute. When he is inside it, he is like Sleeping Beauty in her castle. Lying, waiting, he sleeps, oblivious to all. We stick our arms through portholes in the castle’s side to comfort him or ourselves. Would that we could kiss him and deliver him from his prison! But only his nurse can spring him free.
Certainly, every passing day brings us more freedom. Less than a week ago—just shy of a month after his birth—we were first allowed to take our son out of his box ourselves. Two days ago, they let Kathy nurse him when he is hungry. Soon enough Gabriel will be moved to a crib, his NG tube will come out, and he will receive all of his feedings by mouth. Before that happens, one or both of us will be living at the hospital, and we will share responsibility for him with his nurses. Not long after that, we will bring Gabriel home, and we will share him with no one.
The irony of Mom’s assertion is that when Gabriel does comes home, I won’t need to try to imagine what it’s like to bring a newborn home from the hospital; after all, though he’ll have two months under his onesie, Gabriel will still be a newborn. All of the hesitation and uncertainty and pride and exultation and drudgery and failure—all the difficulty of first-time parenting—still awaits.
My son is crying. His wail is stronger than it was at his birth three weeks ago, but it is still so puny that it’s more likely to inspire pity than alarm. When the doors of his Isolette are closed, the cry that escapes is so muffled, it is as though he were bawling into a pillow.
I try to comfort him. Preterm infants can be difficult to interpret, but often they have trouble collecting themselves. Calming them can be as easy as swaddling them with your hands, pulling their arms and legs down close to their bodies. Such swaddling has become less effective since Gabriel was born. Nevertheless, I try it.
He continues to cry. His heart rate climbs to 215 and then 220 beats per minute, high enough that alarms go off in his room and at the nurse’s station just outside the door. I keep my hands on him, hoping a few more seconds will calm him. I talk to him. I consider laying him on his side because he has often tolerated it better than lying on his back. But I hesitate. I worry that lifting or moving my son may be thought dangerous or transgressive. I don’t want to gain a reputation as a difficult NICU parent.
The alarms continue to echo through the room. Gabriel’s nurse finally comes in. “He is really upset!” she says to no one in particular. She could turn the alarms off but does not. Instead, she stands behind me. After a minute, she says, “Maybe I should lay him on his side.”
So I step aside. As soon as I do, I grow livid. I watch her do exactly what I had thought to do not two minutes prior but didn’t. I watch what she does work: he stops crying; the alarms go silent. For the rest of the night I think her smugness so overbearing that I cannot look her in the eyes.
“Don’t forget that you can fire a bad nurse,” a friend said to me two weeks ago. His daughter had been in a NICU for three months, and it was one of the lessons he had learned late in her stay. I am grateful to have had his his experiences and advice at hand. But the truth is, she isn’t a bad nurse. Perhaps she was too hasty to intervene, but it’s a forgivable mistake. Besides, I am not angry at her. I am angry at myself. Lifting Gabriel to turn him on his side is nothing I have not done already. I should have asserted myself and said, “That is a good idea! I’ll do it.” Better yet, I should have tried it the moment I thought of doing so. But I did neither. I backed away from him in deference to her. I am angry because I left my son’s side. My son for Christ’s sake!
It takes hours to calm down.
Every day in the NICU is not like this day, with full-blown jealous resentment, second-guessing, and self-loathing—but every day has the potential to be.
