Twins Blog: NICU
July 20, 2010, By Josh Katzowitz 2 comments
I won’t forget the panic that crept into my soul. I won’t forget the struggle to keep my hands steady as I called my parents – and her’s – and told them it was happening. I won’t forget my frenzied breathing as I forced the booties over my sneakers and pulled the scrubs over my hips. I won’t forget having to take off my pants and pull them on again after discovering the drawstring mistakenly was in the back.
And I won’t forget the result.
My twins were supposed to be born May 11, but because there were two of them inside my wife’s uterus, we figured they’d peek out their heads in mid-April. That’s what we hoped.
Instead, on Feb. 15, the amniotic sack keeping my twins warm and healthy and bacteria-free inside my wife had burst. And, four days later, with doctors scrambling to find an operating room so they could deliver them on 30 minutes notice, my twins, Stella and Noah, entered our lives.
I won’t forget the fact they were more than two months premature. I won’t forget the sheer humanity of people scrubbed up and washed down in the delivery room – doctors, labor and delivery nurses, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) nurses, respiratory therapists and anesthesiologists. I won’t forget the crowning, the full head of hair that suddenly emerged from the birth canal, my wife’s frenzied plea for me to check on Stella to make sure she was breathing, and the doctor yanking out a breeched Noah three minutes later.
We knew, minutes after the twins were out, they would be directed to the NICU, and we knew their stay there wouldn’t be short. My wife is a medical doctor, so she knew what to expect. I didn’t.
If you have twins who need NICU help, you probably won’t either. Here’s what I learned.
One week in: The twins continue to lose weight, then gain it back. They’re slightly jaundiced, then they’re not. They learn to eat, they learn to swallow, they learn to poop. They’re tiny and wrinkled and have white fuzz all over their bodies. They don’t really look like babies, but they’re the cutest things I’ve ever seen.
As their one-week birthday approaches, I sit in the corner of our calm little NICU suite, fighting off sleep, and I look over at my boy as he hiccups and twitches and tries to stretch his bundled body.
My boy, entombed in hard plastic with a photogenic light shining on him to drive away the jaundice, lays 10 feet from me. But I’ve never felt so far away. My daughter, the same, with the goggles that protects her eyes from the phototherapy. I can’t see most of her face because of the contraption around her head. I can see her mouth open and close, and I can see the spit bubbles that she’s formed. But I can’t see her eyes, and thus, her newly-forming personality.
I feel as if I’m in another country.
My wife could feel a little closer because she gave them food with a rented breast pump. She slept with Snoedel, so the babies, when they slept, could become accustomed to her scent. She could kangaroo with them for 90 minutes at a time, and afterward, the nurses would tell me, “Sorry, you shouldn’t hold them. They were out a long time today.” So, I walk back to my corner and feel miles away.
The baby across the aisle that I’ve noticed the past few days – who had been a resident in the NICU long before we entered its doors for the first time – is no longer there. The nurses wheeled away his crib and his monitor sat blank, his alarms stayed silent. He had gone home to begin his life. My babies, meanwhile, were here for the long haul. I sat in the corner and sighed.
The next day, a new baby arrived in the spot across the way that had just been abandoned. This one was 580 grams, about a pound-and-a-quarter. A little while later, the father walked in. He scrunched his face close to the incubator, trying to catch a glimpse of his tiny creation. He was right there, but he looked so far away. I could relate.
Josh Katzowitz lives in Atlanta and covers the NFL for CBSSports.com. He is a featured contributor to ManoftheHouse.com and author of the book, Bearcats Rising. He's currently working on a book about pro football that is scheduled to be released in 2012.
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