Scab.

A few days ago, I wrote about Rhys and Quin's time in the NICU. It's not the first time I've written about it, but it is the first time that I really went there and wrote about it. On some subconscious level, I've played through snippets of our NICU days a thousand times. The scene that plays most often is us leaving the hospital for the night. Tucking the thin flannel hospital blankets around my tiny babies and leaning in to kiss their faces. Whispering how much I loved them into their sweet and soft little ears. Begging them to be okay. To grow. To understand why, when they woke up that night, I wouldn't be there to scoop them up into my arms.

It's easy to get lost in the right now. And in most ways, what a wonderful place to be lost. My babies are walking. I watch them take these beautiful shaky steps. When they hear music, they immediately start to dance. I sit in awe and just stare at them - their pureness - just experiencing and reacting with wonder and honesty and joy. When they're not fighting over every toy they own, they fall into the moment and lean their heads together, laughing from the core with wild abandon.

All of this makes it easy not to look back. Easy to carefully tiptoe around when it falls across my path. And then I went there. And I wrote it.

I cried.

The details are sharper than knives. I remember the sandy winter grit on the NICU floor. The white board on the wall introducing my babies: "Hi. I'm Quin. Today I weigh 5lbs 1oz." "Hi. I'm Rhys. Today I weigh 5lbs. 6oz." Little dry-erase stars carefully decorating the empty space. Reminding us that this is happy. The incessantly beeping machines. The computer printouts the doctors showed me, neatly charting the dates and times when my babies had momentarily stopped breathing. The nurse who clucked at me, "don't worry dear. We'll get them as high functioning as we can. Easter Seals will work with them." The day I found out that Quin had several unusual cysts on his brain. Sitting alone in the rocking chair that day, holding him and crying. Big salty tears falling on my little sleeping baby. The withdrawal babies down the hall, crying in agony. Trips to the family room. Peeling back the foil lids on plastic containers of cranberry juice and chocolate milk. Believing I would never feel nourished again. Bringing Rhys home. Leaving Quin behind.

In and out of days, I know all of this happened. I thought I had scars.

A scar happens after the flesh heals and the scab falls off.

I wrote it. Hastily and quickly. Without caution. In my haste I caught my scab on the words. It ripped off.

Underneath, to my surprise, is open and raw.

I'm bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.

Stand and Speak

When Rhys and Quin were born, they were admitted to the NICU for several weeks. They had feeding tubes and were kept in hard plastic isolettes for warmth. It wasn't what I'd envisioned for my babies' first days in the world.

We were allowed to visit as much as we wanted, but were warned about touching them too much for fear of over-stimulation. I remember the trepidation and heartbreak I'd feel every time I'd reach my hand through the little porthole into the warmth of the isolette and feel their soft downy skin and delicate tufts of hair. I longed to pick them up and hold them close. Sometimes the nurses would come in and see me standing there with my hand on one of my babies and give me a chiding look. "They need to rest." I had to ask permission to change their diapers. They were almost 24 hours old by the time I got "permission" to try breastfeeding.

It wasn't what I'd envisioned for my first days as a mother. I kept waiting for their real mother to sweep in - a more competent and therefore deserving woman who I imagined would wear peach lipstick and smell faintly of mint gum. The days came and went, but she never appeared. I trudged on. Back and forth to the hospital every day, a hunched and spent shell of my former self. At night I'd set the alarm to go off every two hours so that I could wake up and pump. I'd sit in the dark of our bedroom and cry alongside the whoosh and whir of the Medela, covered in postpartum sweat and sticky from milk. Each morning I'd deposit my night's work with the nurses in the NICU, and I'd ask them to count my supply. I'd anxiously await the results, frantically calculating in my head whether I'd supplied enough milk to get both babies through the day without the nurses supplementing with formula. Formula. Nobody ever asked my permission.

When I finally accepted that the lady with the peach lipstick wouldn't be waltzing in to save us, I realized I would have to muster up my strength and figure out how to be the mother my babies needed. The NICU staff was starting to talk about removing the feeding tubes and starting the babies on bottles. Breastfeeding wasn't going spectacularly, but we were making progress. I knew I didn't want my tiny new babies to have bottles. I did my research. Talked to the lactation consultant. Talked to family and friends. Armed with a page of researched rationale, I walked in to the babies' hospital room one morning and requested to speak with the provider on duty. When the young PA arrived, I took a breath and started my rehearsed speech.

"I want to talk about how we can avoid putting the babies on bottles. I want to exclusively - "

She turned briskly to face me and cut me off. "Not gonna happen." She then opened the porthole on the isolette and reached her hand in to stroke Quin's back. She didn't have to ask anyone's permission. I watched her touch his tiny arms and legs the way I longed to. She smoothed the fuzz on his head. I tried to swallow and couldn't. Four year's worth of wanting and waiting lodged in my throat and refused to leave.

Later that day, the lactation consultant tried to console me. "Just do what they say and get these babies home. Then you can do whatever you want. Sometimes you have to lose a battle to win the war."

An hour later, I was sitting in a rocking chair, feeding one of my babies a bottle while every last frail thread of motherly confidence quietly withered and fell away.

***

It seems that Facebook has removed some of the hyper-sexual pictures of breasts that I included in Monday's post. But there are more. And there will be more. So while removing all of the sexualized images of women might make the playing field more even, that's really not what I'm aiming for. What I'm aiming for is for Facebook and for society as a whole to start viewing breastfeeding with respect instead of disdain, and with support rather than stigma.

In the past three days, over 25,000 people have visited these posts. Many have shared their support. I am overwhelmed and energized. Let's not stop here.

Facebook has offered no direct response. We need to show them that we're not going away. This matters. We matter. Our babies matter.

The woman with peach lipstick never came to save me. She doesn't exist. For Rhys and Quin, I'm what they've got. I lost a battle but I will not lose the war. These are my babies. I'm going to make the world right for them. I believe I can.

***

What next? Where do we go from here?

We need to keep standing up. We need to keep SPEAKING up. If you agree, share these posts. Post them on message boards, post them on Facebook, send them to your local news. Or write your own and share them here. Or on Facebook. Or wherever you feel most comfortable. Share your own mothering story. How did you fight the battle to become the mother your baby(ies) needed?

Write to Ellen. Write to Oprah. Write to NPR or Good Morning America or whoever you think has influence.

Stand. Speak. Don't stop.

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

Or, "why I can't leave my babies for more than three hours."



When the babies were in the NICU, they were hooked up to monitors all day long. Blood oxygen levels, heart rate, pulse - everything was under constant monitoring. And if you're a doctor or a nurse, that's a good thing, because it allows the medical staff to keep a close eye on every baby at every moment, and to be there to help when something goes wrong.



If you're a new parent, it's not great. There are some things in life that are best left to faith and ignorance, like the idea that your newborn will continue to breath. And so while most every parent knows about SIDS and other such horrors, most never have the opportunity to sit in a hospital room with their newborn and watch the monitors and listen to the alarms that are a constant reminder of the danger that lurks around every corner.



Quin had some "stop breathing" events in the hospital. And as a non-medical professional, that sounds pretty damn scary to me. In reality, "stop breathing" events are common in preemies and possibly even in term newborns. Most resolve on their own. Most. When used in context with "stop breathing events" and "resolving," "most" is a really loaded word.



But we were lucky, and Quin's "events" all self-resolved except for one case where the nurses had to give him a gentle rub down to remind his tiny body to breath. After that he was put on a seven day count down. No events for seven days, and he could go home.



So I asked the doctor - "Why seven days? What is magic about that number? What proof do you have that within a week, his body will know to breath all of the time?" His answer surprised me. Seven days is just a hunch about what is reasonably safe. And the hunch is different at every hospital. And sometimes things go wrong, and a baby goes home and has an event that doesn't "self-resolve."



After waiting anxiously and impatiently for my babies to be discharged, I started having second thoughts. I could be a mother by day, sure. But at night, wouldn't they just be safer in the hospital with the reassuring hum of respirators and the constant chatter of alarms? How would I ever sleep? What if I woke up and found that Rhys or Quin had stopped breathing while I slept right next to them?



Turns out that coming home and shutting my eyes at night was like pulling off a band-aid. I asked about apnea monitors and learned that they really like to avoid using them unless absolutely necessary. And I can see how those monitors can be a hard habit to break. So we came home with no fancy monitors - just two healthy babies and two terrified parents newly educated in infant CPR.



The babies turn twelve weeks tomorrow. I still worry about "events." I worry about SIDS. I wake up at night and check to make sure both babies are still alive. I'm our human monitor - but as with all things human, I'm flawed. Unlike the constant and reassuring whir of the electric monitors, I take a break to sleep.



But I am their mother. And I suspect that even as I sleep, I know things. Or so I hope.



It has amazed me that I love these babies more every day. Because every day, I'm certain that it would be humanly impossible to love any more, that my heart would simply explode. And every day, I wake up and am amazed to find that the impossible has happened.

I bask in this amazing, growing love. All the while, I am painfully aware that somebody has taken my living, beating heart, and set it ever so carefully in the middle of a very busy freeway.