Along the road from Birthing Date to Due Date...

The family photographed near our house
May 2011

My 'Google Calendar' proudly announces 'DUE DATE' for today, May 27, 2011, just as I entered it all those months ago.  While we always anticipated this day with great excitement and joy to finally have our (back then still unknown) baby join our little family, little did we know that it would be a second homecoming.

That's right, in the spirit of auspicious dates*, Luka decided to give us a homecoming on his actual due date; only this time it was returning home from hospital where he had to undergo emergency surgery on Tuesday. After what seemed an eternal six weeks in a nursery in Australia, Chris and I both agree that the second time around in the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU) was actually harder than those initial six weeks we spent in Darwin immediately following the birth.  Something about the optics of 'moving backwards', when we had just finally gotten comfortable with having Luka at home, away from the nursery in the first place.

Mom and Luka

The emotions of having another incubator assigned to us, hearing the friendly nurses introduce themselves "Hi, I am <such and such>, and I'll be taking care of Luka this evening...", the constant hand-washing, breast milk expressing, vitals, everything, was almost too much.  Yet, this time we were also thankful for the progress we have clearly made.  With one of the bigger babies in the nursery now, Chris and I were shocked at how tiny a four-day old prem in the corner was, only to realize he is 40g heavier than Luka was at birth.  Is it really possible that Luka was that tiny, fragile, skinny, jerky and pink?  How soon we forget, and how amazing the human race is at adapting when we have to. Looking at the tiny prem in the corner I was once again filled with empathy for the parents who lovingly, though cautiously, gaze and eventually cuddle their overwhelming little bundle.  Could I deal with that if I had to?  Then I snap back to reality and remember, but wait a minute, I have dealt with that...and I know that they too will be okay.  

There were many similarities between the NICU at the private Life Vincent Pallotti hospital just north of Cape Town, and the Special Care Nursery (SCN) at the Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) in northern Australia.  Chief among them is the extraordinary people who work there.  I can't help but wonder about the true calling it takes to become a NICU nurse.  As mentioned in an earlier post, take anyone's most precious, most fragile possession, and choose to be the one to help them deal with it... just amazing.

Dad and Luka

There were, of course, also many differences between the public (state) hospital in a socio-economically challenged town in the Australian outback and an expensive, top-of-the-line private hospital in an affluent part of the metropolitan city of Cape Town.  From the emergency room entry we passed through in Darwin just over two months ago, flanked by the local population camping out on the sidewalks, inconspicuously taking swigs from bottles wrapped in brown paper, and less inconspicuously smoking under the 'no smoking' signs, to the 'camp like' lunches and dinners consisting of plastic mugs with pre-cooked instant oatmeal, white wonderbread and orange juice in foil-topped plastic cups ala coach class.  Compared to Cape Town with the comforter-clad beds, wicker furniture, white crockery and juice served in a glass with ice, along with the fact that you could actually turn off the lights in the room at night, and close the door (that it even had a door), connected by art-filled walls and overstuffed sofas for visitors and waiting patients.  Irrespective of the type of hospital environment though, perhaps of more importance is the fact that of the 22 weeks in 2011, we have now completed our seventh in hospital - or almost 1/3 of the year.  Not exactly the ratio we had in mind when planning a non-hospital delivery with a midwife only, but hey - what are plans for if not for breaking?

And so, our second stint in the NICU came to a ceremonious end when the most anticipated bowel movement of my life (and Luka's) finally occurred at 1800 last night, just in time for our pediatric surgeon, Professor Rob Brown, to witness during his rounds.  He agreed that with that performance, Luka and I could room in together (myself as a non-paying, non-eating, life-support only) boarder, and if all went well, we would be going home this morning.

Which brings me to perhaps one of the most telling lessons of the whole experience...the difference in a term and pre-term delivery.  Luka and I were assigned a bed opposite the NICU, sharing a large, comfortable room with en-suite facilities with a mom and baby girl delivered by C-section the day before.  The irony of spending my due-date night in a maternity ward 'rooming in' with Luka to 'establish' breastfeeding, after nearly ten weeks together, cannot be overstated.  For a few hours I had a window into what a "normal" delivery (in the temporal, not delivery method sense) is like.  Lying there in the dark of night, listening to the sweet, delicate whimpers of a newborn crying to communicate with her mother, echoed by the quiet cooing in a combination of Zulu and Afrikaans as a new mother cuddles, caresses and learns to independently care for her baby, brought back so many memories of the hours before we could hold Luka, and the weeks before I could independently care for him.  I recall how quiet Luka was for the first month of his life.  After his initial screams out of the womb, as with the majority of prems, we hardly ever heard him make a peep.  I empathize with this mother as she struggles to teach her infant to latch and feed, only to recall my two-hourly hand-expressing into tiny syringes, to be walked down the dull, institutional, artless walls of RDH to the Special Care Nursery, followed by the tens of liters of milk expressed by means of electric pump, while Luka matured and gained strength for nearly six weeks to get where this mother automatically found herself on Day 1 with her infant. 

Today, nearly ten weeks after we were blessed with a 1.777kg Luka, I am bouncing a 3.3kg ex-prem on my lap and am truly humbled and indescribably grateful to the opportunities awarded us by means of having had access to world-class medical care in both Australia and South Africa to enable Luka to progress as well as he has.  To all the nurses, the doctors, and other service-providers who have assisted us in some way or another, we cannot thank you enough.  For all the countless mothers and fathers of preemies, you too will find the strength and wisdom to get through, and to those unfortunate enough to birth premature babies every single day in places not equipped to deal with them, I pray that you too will some day experience the joy of holding a healthy, happy, hungry baby in your arms.

As for our own journey from birth date to due date, despite the trials and tribulations of the past ten weeks, and no doubt of the future, I can honestly say...I don't think I would have it any other way...there is something humbling, empowering, and oh so full of grace in caring for a tiny premature baby that is perhaps part and parcel to the calling of those who choose to dedicate their lives to them.  Truly God's most special, and dare I say, perfect creation.

Happy original Birthing Day Luka - you are the sunshine in our days and the stars in our sleepless nights.

Our little angel

*   You may recall that out of 365 days, our boy popped out ten weeks early on his father's birthday


** All photographs courtesy of Brenda Wardall, Hearts in a Shutter