It was Trine’s first night home and we celebrated by ordering pizza, eating it, then passing out. It’s hard on both of us to be apart from Molli for big stretches of time—especially hard on Trine, who also has to contend with a violent hormonal insurgency.
We always look forward to the 9:30 am pusling. That’s a hard word to translate. The dictionary suggests “changing,” since at pusle is to change a baby’s diapers, but it’s more than that: it’s a tending-to, so maybe I ought to call it “the 9:30 tending.” Anyway, these 9:30 affairs are very simple but fulfilling. We arrive, coo over Molli as she sleeps, take off her little hat, wash her head and behind her ears, and change her diaper. The nurse will then often weigh or measure her before handing her over to one of us to hold while she’s fed. That can be a 1-2 hour hold. Then we settle her back in the incubator, change her diaper (and maybe change it again), put her little hat back on, and watch her drift back to sleep.
All the other parents are in there doing the same thing. There are six babies in our particular room. Unfortunately the most recent arrival seems to be having very serious problems. It’s unbearable to watch the doctors and nurses fidgeting heroically with the big machines they roll in to try and help this little creature, while the baby’s family look on in breathless anxiety, terror, and hope. It’s a constant reminder that we’ve been very, very fortunate with Molli—and a powerful incentive to keep knocking wood.
To be uncomfortably honest I wish that child wasn’t in the same room. It’s scary and sad and I can tell it also upsets Trine and I can’t help feeling the family may resent the rest of us for our “easy” premies. I know in my darkest heart of hearts I found myself resenting all the big full-term moms waddling around the birthing ward when Trine was going through all the bleeding—especially the ones I saw smoking. “You terrible women,” I thought, “here’s my lovely wife who’s done everything right, hasn’t smoked or drank and has watched her diet and done everything, everything right, and she’s going through all this—and you just puff away on your cigarettes and make it to full term without a hitch. I hate you.”
There is simply nothing more depressing than a bad day at the acute care wing of a maternity ward—nothing. I like to think the wonderful doctors, nurses, and midwives we’ve met would tell me that there is nothing more fulfilling than a good day at the acute care wing of a maternity ward. The collages that line the walls, testaments of gratitude from the parents of now-thriving children who’d been born at 700, 800, 900 grams, suggest that’s probably the case. But Trine and I will get only one really good day out of the ward, and that’s the day we bring Molli home. Every other day, as pleasant and encouraging and uplifting as it may be, is still, at bottom, a sad day.
But things really are getting better! I just needed to get that emotional bile out of me. I’m no good to Trine or Molli if I’m all wound up in my own neuroses, and getting them out in the open like this is my own equivalent of a big crying jag. I feel much better.
Off to the pusling…
