Nurses and NICU Babies

      Nurses and NICU babies go together like hot fudge and ice cream…. like 4^th of July and watermelon…. like bees and honey.  They just belong to each other!  I’ve eaten delicious hot fudge sundaes, spent 4^th of July noshing on watermelon and love the bees buzzing around a flower to make honey.  So, I know.  I also have lived the NICU life along side the nurses with my sweet grandchildren.  Yes, that is plural.  Grandchildren. My daughter Whitney and her husband Matt have been the proud parents of all three NICU babies.

     Grady was our first NICU baby.  He was born in California, 5 hours away from my home in Az.  Whitney was in labor much to long and Grady became stressed and aspirated meconium.  He was whisked away the moment he was born to the NICU.  It didn’t take long for those nurses to know that he was in need of a much higher level NICU than they could offer.  They comforted and explained what the procedure was going to be to Air Lift him to another hospital.  When the whole flight team of nurses arrived, it looked like they must have called in the Calvary!  They had very official looking uniforms and there were a lot of them, as well as equipment they brought in.  As Whitney and I watched from her hospital room we prayed that our sweet baby Grady would be safe on his helicopter ride to the next NICU.  My husband Gary drove Matt down the mountain as the helicopter whirred away. The nurses attending Whitney quickly and efficiently processed her release so that just a few hours after birth, Whitney , my daughter Torey and I walked out of the hospital empty handed and heavy hearted.  There were no celebrations, no pictures of mom, dad and baby by the bedside and nobody with any easy answers.

     This next NICU was a well-oiled machine!  Loma Linda University Medical Center hospital was huge!  They had 80 babies in their NICU!  We soon found out that our baby Grady was one of the sickest babies there that day! As we went in to see the baby, the nurses would explain and comfort us as they quickly and adeptly worked on all the tubes and wires that crisscrossed his small body.  He was motionless and we had not ever heard that glorious first cry.  Only our tears.  Tears of sadness, confusion, and moments of an all-encompassing fear.  But the nurses, they never seemed rattled.  Even when they continued to try poking needles in little veins that just weren’t cooperating.  Even when there was another little one crying, or when the incessant alarms ring like an orchestra of panic to my ears.  They stay calm.

     We quickly got to know our nurses.  Each of them had their own story.  Why they became a nurse or how they made their way to this NICU.  One of the nurses who we loved was a gentleman of about 65.  He went into nursing after a military career.  He had decided to come out of retirement and take care of little newborn babies.  His big hands and strong arms were the perfect place for these little ones to grow and get well in!

     Each night as we left our sweet baby Grady in the care of the NICU nurses we would say goodbye and pray that our nurses would love him as we would.  We believe they always did.  We came back each new day with tired bodies and weary souls, but the nurses greeted us with fresh faces and new reports of Grady’s progress.

       After God answered the prayers of thousands, He performed a miracle and Grady was ready to come home two weeks later.  We said our goodbyes to the nurses and wished that one of them could go home with Grady.

      Grady was the first grandchild so needless to say I was a little gun shy every time another of our grandkids was born.  Four more sweet babies joined our family with no NICU fanfare.  Then along came Grady’s identical twin sisters…….

      Wow! Whitney and Matt had moved to Arizona, so we were within 20 minutes driving distance to tackle this new NICU stay at Banner Estrella Hospital.  Now there were two babies, not just one, and yes double the fear!  The girls had twin to twin transfusion syndrome.  So, they were in trouble inside Whitney and she went into an emergency c-section.  As soon as those little girls came out of the womb, they went straight to the NICU!  One of the NICU nurses goes in for the c-section so they will know the babies from the very beginning! The nurses cart the babies off to the NICU in their little incubators with the dads trailing behind.  That’s how you know there is a new baby arriving.  You see the dad who is bleary eyed, and blank faced as the nurses calmly maneuver them and the baby through the maze of hallways and curtains.  That was Matt too, only he was following two babies.  And they looked more like dolls at 2.5 pounds and 3 pounds!  He came out and got Gary and I in no time and took us back to see our new little miracles.  And I can’t overstate how absolutely tiny they were! 

     The first people we see are the nurses moving quickly and calming attending the girls.  I am amazed out how well the NICU nurse uses all his/her fine motor skills.  These are very tiny people with even tinier veins!  And to add to the difficulty level you have to stick your hands through an opening in the covered incubator that is not very easy to navigate.  They let us know what they are doing and why in a calm reassuring voice. 

     They placed our baby girls close to the nurse’s station for better monitoring.  They quickly set up house with a crafty sign with the girls’ name on it and the board with all the pertinent information for each girl.  We became accustomed to looking at those boards the minute you walked into the room for the latest updates.  It always had the name of your day nurse and your night nurse.  We soon settled in for a long haul in the NICU with this team of nurses.  Each of them was constantly encouraging and upbeat about the babies future and development.  Some days didn’t feel very encouraging to us, but each nurse would always find a small nugget to relay to us about each of the girls.  As the days felt long traveling back and forth to the NICU the hours went by quickly as we loved on the girls while the nurses attended their every need and we quickly became enmeshed in the nurse’s lives.

      We were always happy for the nurse when she had the next days off and would let us know her plans, but sad that we wouldn’t have her talking and cooing to our baby girls!  We had a front row seat in our recliner with a baby in arms to their work lives.  There are not very many jobs where your clients or patients get to watch you do your job all day long!  We saw if you liked Starbucks or Dutch Bros!  We know when you get hungry and like to take lunch……but don’t because a baby’s needy cry trumps the growling of your stomach.  We saw how you rocked that one constantly crying baby because his family wasn’t around.  That reassured me that when our babies cry you comfort them also!  I heard you as you talked and laughed to that little drug baby next door to our girls because someone needs to give that innocent child a little extra love!  We noticed that you came in five days in row because the NICU was overflowing with babies who needed your expertise and care, even though your own kids needed some extra help with homework and your husband would have liked to have seen you at dinner at least once this week.  We noticed.

      As I would sit by myself holding the girls, especially on quiet days I would look up the hallways and think of all the tiny souls who are here.  The tiny souls that are passing through the NICU for a time.  Some spend long amounts of time like months, others only days.  But each child passes through the loving hands of a NICU nurse.  I would pray for the babies and pray for the nurses.  It gave me a sense of purpose as I passed my time holding one of my sweet baby girls close to my heart.  We weren’t allowed to go into other baby’s room, so I would look at the tiny fingers, sleeping eyes and button nose of my granddaughters and know that each of the other babies were the same blessing that mine was.  Each of them deserved the love that the nurses offered them and that they mattered in this great big world that they were born into. 

I wondered how the NICU nurse can feel the soft silk of a scarf or the petal of rose without feeling the skin of a newborn and seeing one of the sweet faces of her tiny patients in her mind? I see that a NICU nurse knows how precious life is and how each tiny breath carries these babies closer to a full life of purpose. 

     The nurses watched us and held the baby girls up to the window so their two brothers could see them for the first time!  Their little boy noses were pressed against the window to see if these baby girls everyone had been talking about were real.  I looked up from behind the boys and there was a sea of blue scrubs smiling at the sight of our chaotic little cloud of love! Thank you for being there in our most precious moments!

     I am amazed by the NICU nurses who stand by our sides in our lowest times and celebrate with us as we leave them behind to the world outside the NICU. And they do it day after day. As we left the NICU with our first baby twin Addison, we were accompanied by a NICU nurse outside the locked NICU door to our car.  She saw us as we reluctantly and heavy heartedly left little Lyla behind.  She saw us as we cried when they announced over the loud speaker that Addison had “graduated” out of the NICU!  And they did it all over again when Lyla “graduated” two weeks later as we walked out the door with less trepidation and more confidence!

      So it is an honor to be able to see these women and men do their jobs so well.  It is a blessing to have them touch our sweet babies with love. It is an inspiration that they truly care so deeply for small little lives who have not yet gained a voice in this big world.  Each time we said “thank you” it seemed to never be enough.  It felt like a small tattered paper with the scribbled words of “thank you” across it.  But in our hearts it was as big and beautiful as an Arizona sunset in brilliant oranges, pinks and purples with God scripting the words “Thank You” across the sky!

      Some things just go together!  If you are eating a hot fudge sundae or a slice of watermelon or see that busy bee making honey think of a NICU nurse! When we see our babies as they grow we are still Thanking a NICU Nurse!