{ the preemie prism}
Every face I turned to in the operating
room looked worried. In my medical- ly induced haze, I could feel the doctors tugging at my belly and then … “Mrs. Lumpkin, here’s Baby A,” I heard a voice say as someone held the tiny newborn to my face. This was not the cute, chub- by baby I had imagined. At 2 pounds, 5 ounces, he resembled a scrawny bird. It was 3:16 a.m. A minute later,
the voice announced: “Mrs. Lumpkin, here’s Baby B.” He was plumper at 3 pounds, 5 ounces. Both boys were limp, wrinkly and covered with fine black hair, known as lanugo, which all fetuses develop but shed at around 33 weeks of gestation. I waited for them to cry but didn’t hear a sound before they were whisked to the NICU. Through the commotion, I heard
someone mention the babies’ shared placenta, suggesting that the boys were probably identical twins. The perina- tologist was concerned they may have suffered twin-to-twin transfusion syn- drome in utero, a dangerous condition in which blood supply between multi- ple fetuses (usually identical twins) is disproportionate. I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up,
Ben was standing beside me with pic- tures the NICU staff had taken of our tiny boys. My doctor came in with an up- date: The babies were breathing on their own — a very good sign. But their trajec- tory would depend on how they fared in the early days. Again, I started to cry. I had just given birth to my children, and I couldn’t even hold them. I looked up at Ben, who was trying not to look worried. “Happy Father’s Day,” I said.
pumping oxygen into tiny bodies. The space was a maze of isolettes: small, clear, box-shaped cribs, where sick babies lay until they were healthy enough to leave. Despite their low birth weights, tests
T
showed my boys had no brain bleeds or other significant problems. But they sometimes forgot to breathe and had been hooked to the beeping, swooshing
he sounds struck me first — the constant beeps and alarms signaling that a baby had stopped breathing, and the whooshing of machines
machines. The alarm would alert the medical staff to touch or rock them gen- tly to stimulate their breathing. Both boys also were exhibiting heart rate problems and, because they had not yet developed the sucking reflex, they had to be fed through a tube that snaked through their noses to their stomachs. I walked slowly toward the boys. We’d
named Baby A — the one the doctor had called the “runt” — Cameron; Baby B was Matthew. They were lying on their backs in only diapers, which swallowed them. They were not well enough for me to hold. And so, I just stood there, staring at their tiny bodies. My heart filled with agonizing guilt: How did this happen? What did I do to cause it? Three days after the boys were born,
I was discharged, but I felt only sad- ness, leaving without them. The NICU nurses urged me to allow myself to begin healing before returning to the hospital. Two days later, though, I was back, studying the staff ’s every move, preparing to take over caring for the boys. I taped a wedding photo of Ben and me on each of their isolettes. Eight days passed before I could feed Mat- thew with a bottle — a combination of breast milk and formula to increase the calories — and a few days more for Cameron. Nearly a month after their birth, I started breastfeeding them. I celebrated when they gained an ounce and stressed when they lost one. Some days, I forgot to eat. Chores
piled up at home, and the postman stopped delivering our mail because the box was too full. One month, I forgot to pay the mortgage. I wanted my babies home, and the guilt lingered. The boys were progressing slowly, but both had trouble keeping down their milk, which interfered with their weight gain. As excited as I was to get to the hos-
pital each day, I felt lonely and depressed until one day a new mom named Sally Glick approached and told me that she also had tacked a photo of herself and her husband on her son’s isolette. Her son Robert, born prematurely because of her preeclampsia (pregnancy-induced hy- pertension) weighed 3 pounds, 9 ounces. Though he was born bigger and later than my boys, Robert had suffered more problems, including a brain bleed, apnea
18 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | august 15, 2010
and a hole in his heart, which eventually closed with medication. He also needed oxygen therapy to help his lungs mature. Sally and I began to schedule our
visits to the hospital around the same time. We spent hours rocking, feeding and reading to our babies. Neither of us could imagine then that our preemie journeys were just beginning.
M
atthew came home first, on July 16, exactly a month to the day after he was born. He weighed a little over four pounds.
With Cameron still in the NICU, the staff knew Ben and I were in no mood to cele- brate. There were no flowers or balloons, just long hugs and tearful goodbyes. As I walked out of the hospital, I looked over my shoulder in the direction of the NICU and whispered: “ ’Bye, Cameron. We’ll be back tomorrow.” After two months in the NICU, Cam-
eron finally made it to four pounds and joined us at home. For the first time, I felt like a “real” mother, flitting around the house, caring for my boys. Ben and I charted each feeding, noting how much
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
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