Hi!!! Sorry it has taken me so long to finish my story about Maren’s birth but life happens and I get sidetracked easily by bright, shiny objects. 

Now, when I said I remembered everything that happened the day she was born, I do, but my 5 days in the hospital are somewhat blurred together as well as the days (2 weeks total) she spent in the NICU.  

So let me back up a bit…I have anxiety.  And that anxiety worsens when I am pregnant. I constantly worry about what I am doing and if it will impact the little human growing inside of me. Am I eating the wrong food? If I workout, will my heart rate get too high and hurt her? Will the stress at work impact my pregnancy? Did the tool the chiropractor just used on me effect my tiny human in my belly? (yes, these are all real thoughts I had) 

I worried much more with Maren than I did with Mason, I am not sure why…but I almost drove myself batshit crazy with unrealistic concerns and I am fairly certain my family hated me for those 7.5 months. I mean, just really stupid stuff that most normal people do not even begin to think about when pregnant…or at all. 

So as soon as “flu” season hit, you can bet this mama was in full panic mode.  I am not able to have flu shots due to having Guillain-Barré when I was in middle school. I made Aaron do the grocery shopping, I would make Mason wash his hands or shower immediately after school (ugh, my poor family) and I rarely left the house.  

I even considered cancelling my baby shower the week before Maren came in fear of catching the flu from my friends or family who were attending. I mean, who does that? 

So yes, not only do I have anxiety, but when my anxiety is heightened, I go to silly lengths to try and control situations thinking it will make things better.  

The point of that little tidbit will make more sense when I conclude this post but for the record, we had my shower on Feb 8th, I didn’t get sick from anywhere there yet I still had to deliver early due to some unknown (to this day) infection. Coincidence? I think not. 

So where I left off…the first couple of days after Maren was born, I didn’t venture to her room as much as I should have or could have. It broke my heart to see her hooked up to so many machines, her little belly struggling as she breathed.  Even worse, I couldn’t hold her.  And the machines…every beep just made me worry more!

Most of the time when the NICU Dr’s would talk to us, I didn’t understand what they were saying, I relied on Aaron to retain the information and then tell me again later when I asked him a million times if she was going to be ok and what the Dr’s said and then I would analyze it all over and over again in my head.  What did it mean? All I wanted to know was whether or not she would be ok and WHEN! By the way, those were the two things they won’t straight up answer in the NICU…they dance around it. 

Meanwhile at night, when things “calmed” down, I would find myself shaking in bed, not able to sleep or control my body. I couldn’t really pinpoint if it was anxiety or if it was from one of the many antibiotics they had me on for the possible infection.  They ended up giving me meds to help me relax so I could sleep but now that I look back, I am 100% certain it was all anxiety related.  

I was released after 5 days, standard c-section time in the hospital and when I went to lay down that night at home, I was feeling pain in my chest. Now, this is something that is not taken lightly after a c-section so I called my Dr to talk about it. She told me to go in for some tests which led to basically an entire Friday spent getting blood work, X-rays and scans making sure there were no clots, etc. from the c-section.  Everything turned out to be ok, again, if I had to guess, 100% anxiety related.  

Maren was "ONLY" in the NICU for a total of two weeks but that two weeks felt like a lifetime. There were a lot of ups and downs. A lot of crying.  One of the positives was I was so busy worrying about her, I never really felt too much pain from my c-section, got to find the silver lining, right?

We had amazing nurses who put things into perspective for me when I would find myself crying or upset if there was little to no progress when I would arrive to visit her.  They told me there were babies in the NICU for over a year, can you imagine? 

We had Dr’s who made sure Maren got the best care possible and they always had the best of intentions when deciding what the next steps were for our baby girl.  Even when they know it is heartbreaking for parents to hear, "sorry, she isn’t going home today,” "probably not tomorrow either," they still stick to their guns because that is their job.   And while I may not have seemed like it then, I am forever grateful for the Mercy NICU staff for taking such good care of my little girl. 

9 days after her delivery, on 2/23 we finally made a big step: Oxygen/Cannula came off and it was time for her first bottle feeding. After that she spent a week getting used to taking her bottle without any desaturations, if she “passed” that test, we could go home. Every time we fed her a bottle, I was secretly praying that the monitors did not beep.  Every beep was a setback in getting our girl home!  The day she came home, we were definitely not expecting it! It was March 1st in the morning when the Dr told us we would be going home.  We didn’t have warm clothes for her or a blanket for her carseat! But I didn’t care, we took the hospital blankets and BOLTED out of there all smiles…heart rate monitor in tow (PS - those things are not my friend, false alarms while you are driving are enough to make you shit yourself). 

Finally having our little family of 4 under one roof felt amazing! Of course, we still weren’t in the clear, we had the heart rate monitor for a week after she came home to make as a precaution. We had an in home nurse come check on her and we had to get her shots to help reduce the severity of rotavirus should she contract it.  And I wasn’t allowed to take her anywhere for like 3 months and guests were to be limited. To say that was challenging for me was an understatement but I was going to do everything I could to keep my little nugget healthy at home! 

Now I promise, there is a point to me sharing this story. We never had any answers as to why I had a fever that day or what type of infection I may have had…none of the test ran came back with anything conclusive. While that is really frustrating, I also feel like it all happened for a reason.  

Was it how I planned for her to be brought into this world? No. Was it really hard for me to accept the fact that the first two weeks of her life were in spent in a hospital and not at home snuggling on the couch without machines and monitors? Yes.  Was it hard to balance having a kid at home while one was in the NICU? Yes. Was it hard as hell as on us as a family mentally and physically? Yes.  

That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? 

I feel like someone was trying to teach me that while I try REALLY (really) hard to control all aspects of my life, it is not all in my control.  This little girl came into the world 6 weeks early whether I liked it or not that day and she was going to teach me all about learning to not take life too seriously, to calm down, relax a little more, to go with the flow (not all the time, haha) and to love and appreciate more.  

Now I can look back and say while it still hurts my heart to remember those days, it is part of who she is and she is a fighter. She is independent and brave.  She is strong and curious.  She knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to let you know. And most importantly, she is a perfectly happy and healthy almost 2 year old. And for that, I am grateful. <3 

Cover photo by Lisa Parsons Photography.