Day Two - Ventilation Required

All we need to do is make it through each day.

We could not touch or hold E as he would lose too much oxygen being handled. He was not at all ready for the outside world. He was extremely small and painfully thin, he had no fat whatsoever, no eyebrows or eyelashes, no toenails and his fingers were so thin that they were almost transparent. In spite of all of this E was simply beautiful.

The urge to touch him and hold him, comfort him and be close to him was overwhelming. The maternal instinct to help him on his journey by letting him be and wanting to hold him close was breaking me apart. The environment was clinical and hostile yet the nursing staff were supportive and wonderful. I sat next to E's "cot" and I read to him, and sang to him and read to him and then I sobbed and cried, and I cried some more and I did everything in my power to resist reaching out and grabbing him and holding him close to me and then I cried some more (and I think the other mothers in the unit stopped crying when I stopped singing).

The fact that I was still on pethadine from the caesarean helped me to face this awful time but my heart was in pieces and my level of fear was astronomical. This little tiny, defenceless baby seemed so much stronger than me.

E was placed on a ventilator today as breathing on his own was becoming too much effort. He also got moved to level 3 care. He seemed to be settled on the ventilator. He was also placed under a single phototherapy light as his jaundice levels were too high. In the beginning of this light treatment we really thought that he enjoyed it as he stretched out and looked to be offering his body to the lights. After a couple of days we realised that this was not the ideal way for him to lie, he needed to feel more contained and ideally would like to be swaddled and in a fetal position. I began to hate the lights.