I Never Knew

There so much about having a baby I never knew, so much that our past experience hid and prevented me from enjoying and living.

These eleven days with baby Ja.ck have highlighted all those little things we missed. Contrary to what I thought, instead of feeling a sense of healing and peace from a typical birth experience, the pain from the boys' early days has come flooding back.

I didn't know what it was like to announce that I had a baby and have people genuinely happy because of the birth. With the boys, not many people bothered to tell us congratulations; those who did held a look of fear in their eyes when they said it. There wasn't joy at the announcement of Sh.awn's and Ja.son's births, only sadness.

I didn't know how everyone would flood to the hospital to visit and celebrate the new life. After the boys were born, I was there for two weeks, yet I had no visitors outside of my mom. People didn't know what to say, so they stayed away. During the 15 excruciatingly long NICU weeks, only a handful of people ever got to see the boys in person, and that includes close family members.

I didn't know what it was like for me to be the focus of the medical profession, to have many more checks and visits from doctors and nurses than the baby did, or to be the one with the wires and tubes. The baby had a daily weight check and a few temperature checks. That is it. Blows my mind.

I didn't really know what it was like to stare at my baby's face as he slept...

with the freedom to hold him for as long as I wanted without eyes and monitors scrutinizing my every move...

to not have to ask for permission to even touch him.

I didn't know what it was like to feel the immediate connection with my baby. It took me weeks months to really bond with Sh.awn and Ja.son. It has taken me years to forgive myself for that. If I am honest, maybe I never have...

I didn't really know that a newborn displays a whole host of emotions on his face while he sleeps. (I love watching his face change as he sleeps. Oh my, he is such a handsome boy.) There was always something obstructing my view of the twins; I missed seeing much of the their faces for months.

I didn't know what it was like to not live in a constant state of overwhelming fear.

I didn't really know how HUGE a mere eleven weeks and one day would be to the health of a baby,

that the reality we lived for so, so long was that extreme.

How could I know?

This week has been hard not because Ja.ck is a challenge (he isn't), or because I am sleep deprived (which is to be expected), or even because I am battling some sort of bug.
This week has been hard because I am struggling with the unfairness of it all--of how I still hate that the big boys didn't get an easier start to life, of how things could have been...maybe should have been. It makes me sad actually.

The "loss" of that time is heightened, haunting me.

I didn't really know how much prematurity had stolen from all of us.

Yes, I imagine that some of these feelings are compounded by the hormonal changes I'm experiencing. Some of it is guilt's ugly head rearing again even though I have tried over and over again to knock that beast to the ground.

But a lot of it, I think, is that I didn't really know.

When I didn't really know what others experience, somehow I didn't feel like I missed out on so much. I fooled myself into believing that our experience couldn't have been all that different than everyone else. A baby is a baby, right?

Sure, it was obvious to some degree that what we went through during those days was a far cry from "normal" even for a preemie birth.

But, I didn't really know.

Now that I do, it just plain hurts all the more.