Journal Entries from a Preemie Mama
My water broke unexpectedly at 23 weeks while I was in the middle of leading a Passover seder nearly 3,000 miles from home - talk about an exodus! My daughter was born at 25 weeks, on May 2, 2019. This is a selection of my journal entries from the first 6 months of my daughter’s life, including the 98 days she spent in the NICU.
June 10, 2019
You have to reach the bottom to have an awakening. Rumi says a wound is where the light enters you.
I transitioned from shock and sadness to anger yesterday. Anger is my least favorite, least comfortable emotion!
But it is a shift, and another shift will come. It's kind of like a Gantt chart with overlapping feelings, not just one dissipating and one beginning. It compounds, and it's a lot.
June 25, 2019
I don't want to be here. I want her out in the world with us.
I don't want to be complimented for being positive and resilient. Just because I can be strong doesn't mean I don't want the easy way.
Catch 22: my body is breaking down because I'm stressed, but I need my body to get through this and to do what I need to do for my baby.
I'm confused about what's next. Is she just feeding and growing? Does she still need to develop? When can we leave? How do we know?
UGH.
July 4, 2019
You never know who's sitting on a park bench by a pond on a beautiful summer day in brand name workout clothes listening to a podcast episode about bravery and watching their baby in the hospital on an app.
July 6, 2019
“Bravery's child can sometimes be sadness because the catalyst may be a terrible and traumatic event.” - The Moth
July 7, 2019
I'm nervous about bringing her home unmonitored.
I'm nervous she won't learn how to breastfeed.
I want my body back.
I want exercising back.
I'm nervous my career has stalled and I won't be able to get back into the groove.
I'm nervous about getting pregnant again.
I don't know if I could go through this again. I don’t know if I want to know who I’d become if I went through this again.
July 10, 2019
My fingers and hands hurt. They are phone-holding hands: while I pump, while I text incessantly, while I post pics on Tinybeans, while I read articles to my daughter as my husband holds her.
They should be baby holding hands.
July 11, 2019
Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety 'til I sank it
I'm crawling on your shores
- Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine
In first world problems, we have a mouse, and part of being a mom is pretending to your kids that you are not scared of the mouse when in fact YOU ARE PETRIFIED OF THE MOUSE. - A dear friend
August 19, 2019
I’m grieving my third trimester.
I’m not grieving the midwife/doula experience I had planned, surprisingly. I had a beautiful birth experience with empathetic, expert, warm, kind, talented, creative doctors and nurses. Giving birth was meditative for me.
August 24, 2019
I want to take my babe places and show her off and be in the world and say yes to seeing friends. Instead, we have to isolate to keep her strong and healthy. It makes me feel paranoid, isolationist, not loving, not warm...and I'm not those things.
I keep telling myself to lean into all of the amazingly supportive friendships I've maintained - and gained! I am, but I'm still hurt by the friends who haven’t shown up for me in the ways I needed.
October 9, 2019
The fact that we don't know why I delivered prematurely can be freeing. It just...happened.
I accept that fact and am not burdened by why or how to fix it or what the reason is. I can just go from there. I can find meaning and purpose in the reality of it.
That doesn't help with the future, though. What will I do next time? Will there be a next time?
I’m trying to embrace my mom's old adage and accept people for what they have to offer. To not be mad at friends who haven't reached out as often or in the way that I would like. To value their previous outreach and sentiments, their strengths, and their own life priorities. Also, to remember the times when I did not support friends in crisis, either because I wasn't aware enough or couldn’t empathize or was even impatient. Love is still there.
Yom Kippur 2019
Pumping while watching Yom Kippur services on my phone.
NYE 2020
Don’t be flippant. Don’t just say, “it was only one year.” Value and live each moment as realistically possible. This is my one and only life.
Now, my daughter is on the verge of walking and she’s such a parrot that we have to stop swearing around her (how the **** do we do that?!). She loves to snuggle and read and giggle. She’s in the 90th percentile for height (which she certainly doesn’t get from me). I love to listen to her sweet, little voice, watch her learn and grow and explore, and wonder where the time has gone.
~Danya Shults
