Elsie
My son spent a month in NICU and SCBU after he was born at 31 weeks. I didn't see him for five hours. My most vivid memory of those early hours was that I was smiling the whole time, but I don't actually know why. I think I was just in absolute shock.
From seven in the morning until eleven at night I’d just sit next to the incubator trying to hold us both together.
Holding us together
Asking permission
Having my pregnancy cut short made everything more surreal. I think in the last two months you look and feel like you’re going to have a baby. I missed all of that. The first day I saw him it genuinely didn’t feel like a different day to me at all until I got into the room and then obviously the heat and everything hit me, so, for me, holding it together was just sitting there in utter disbelief that he was here.
In NICU you’re constantly being told what to do. So it’s either yes, you can change his nappy or no, he doesn’t need it changing, or yes we’ll take his tube out. Or yes, you can hold him. Your first experience of motherhood is somebody constantly watching over you and telling you what to do. Later on I realised that I had no confidence in my mothering. I just doubted myself all the time.