First Words: Bonding With Baby

A NICU birth story about the love I thought I’d missed and the bond I built anyway.

Being pregnant was hard for me. I wasn’t sleeping well, it was difficult to move around, and even though I wasn’t particularly worried about anything, my anxiety became overwhelming. During the third trimester, I counted down the days until our due date. I often felt guilty for not being more grateful for the experience.

By the ninth month, I had swelling all over my body, especially in my feet, and my blood pressure was starting to creep up. The night before our 38 week appointment, I got a higher than normal reading on our home blood pressure cuff. I hoped it was wrong. I called the nurse line for reassurance, and they told me to come to our regular visit as planned. I tried to brace myself for what the next day would bring.

At the clinic, we saw a different midwife than usual. In the final weeks, we’d been meeting several providers so they’d be familiar faces when we got to the hospital. When she saw my blood pressure and swollen feet, she casually suggested we stop by labor and delivery for more testing. Her tone was cheerful, but the clinic could run routine labs on its own, so I could tell this was out of the ordinary.

In triage, they hooked me up to a monitor and checked my blood pressure every 15 minutes for about four hours. By the end of the night, their attitude had completely changed, and the midwife on call didn’t want me to leave. My labs were normal, but my blood pressure was still high. I was diagnosed with gestational hypertension, and they recommended starting an induction that night. We negotiated a few hours at home to rest, grab our packed hospital bags, and feed our cat. When I looked up my readings later, I understood why she was so concerned.

At home that evening, I couldn’t sleep. I had wanted our baby to arrive on his own terms, and the idea of an induction was frightening. It felt like I was forcing him and my body to do something they weren’t ready for. I had put so much time and energy into planning how I’d manage a spontaneous labor, and suddenly I felt completely unprepared. I stayed up all night researching induction methods, packing and re-packing our bags, tidying the house, and praying that everything would go well.

The next day, we went back to the clinic for an outpatient ultrasound to confirm that baby was doing well and in the right position. Both the ultrasound and the NST were reassuring. At 7 pm on Thursday, we returned to the hospital for the scheduled induction. Everyone kept asking if I was excited. Honestly, I felt confusion and grief that our plans had changed so suddenly. I wanted to look back on this experience with joy, and I was afraid the induction would fail and I’d end up needing emergency surgery.

Once we were admitted, the process remained confusing. The midwife on call wanted to try several induction methods at once to get labor moving quickly. I preferred to try one at a time to reduce the risk of uncontrolled pain or side effects. For the first 24 hours, there was a constant push and pull between us and the medical staff.

After about 36 hours, my regular midwife happened to be on call, and our doula arrived around the same time. The vibe shifted in a positive direction, and labor finally began to progress. It was a good reminder that stress can stall the process. Fifty-seven hours after we were admitted, around 4 am on Sunday, our baby was born.

In the months before his birth, I had imagined meeting him many times. I had even practiced what I would say. But the moment they placed him on my chest was nothing like I pictured. In the minutes before his birth, his heart rate on the monitor suddenly changed, and the atmosphere in the delivery room grew very tense. He was born with the cord wrapped twice around his neck and was under a lot of stress. The first thing I said to him was “I’m sorry.” I felt like I had done something wrong.

Because he needed extra monitoring, we didn’t get the golden hour I’d imagined. After three minutes, the midwife cut the umbilical cord and he went to the warmer for evaluation. When they brought him back, I was shaking so badly from adrenaline and exhaustion I was afraid I would drop him, so I asked my husband to hold him instead. I was in a lot of pain. His blood sugar was low, so the pediatrician wanted to run more tests and asked my husband to go with them to the special care nursery. It felt like everyone left at once. The room that had been full of nurses and doctors was suddenly empty, and I was completely alone. I could hardly stay awake anymore and drifted off to sleep.

Eventually, I was transported to the postpartum recovery room, and an hour or so later, my husband joined me. That’s when I learned the special care nursery was actually the NICU. I was heartbroken that our baby wasn’t well enough to be in our room. Instead of resting and enjoying our first days as a family, I spent them going back and forth between my room and his.

I was discharged two days later on Tuesday, but the pain I’d expected to slowly improve was getting worse. I couldn’t sit, stand, walk, or lie down comfortably. The nurse who discharged us commented that I should be walking by now and that it was odd I was in so much pain, but she sent us home anyway. It felt deeply wrong to leave the hospital without our baby. We went home for an hour, then went back to spend the night on the sofa in his NICU room so I could be there when the pediatrician did rounds.

When I woke up on Wednesday morning, the pain was unbearable. I couldn’t stand up straight or walk unassisted, and I felt weak and unsteady. When our son’s NICU nurse saw me, she could tell something was wrong and told me I needed to go to the ER. She probably saved my life. In triage, my blood pressure was higher than it had ever been. I was diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia with severe features and readmitted that night. I was relieved that my pain would finally be addressed, but absolutely gutted to be facing another setback. At this point we had already been in the hospital for a full week, and all I wanted was for the three of us to go home.

Meanwhile, our baby was struggling with several issues, including low blood sugar and poor feeding. He also developed a fever, which triggered even more testing, and waiting for results was agonizing. My doctors wanted me to rest, but any chance I got, I wheeled myself down to the NICU to see him. It was hard even to hold him because our IV lines kept tangling together. I just wanted to cuddle him without any cords.

On Saturday, nine days after our initial admission, I was well enough to be released a second time. We went home again and finally spent a night in our own bed, but still without our baby. I hated seeing his empty bassinet in our room. We were back at the hospital bright and early the next morning to hear the pediatrician’s updates. His fever was subsiding, and the only obstacle left was teaching him to eat so he could get off the feeding tube. For two days, we worked with him diligently to learn the bottle.

Even that didn’t go as planned. Because I still wanted to breastfeed and he hadn’t figured out how to nurse, I had to keep up a rigorous pumping schedule to protect my supply. Every three hours, my husband fed him a bottle while I pumped. I found the process utterly joyless. I hated being hooked up to a machine, and I felt envious that I couldn't hold him and feed him.

At last, on Tuesday, twelve days after our initial admission and nine days after he was born, we all came home together. Holding him without cords or IVs was an incredible feeling. As we buckled him into his car seat and loaded the car, I thought our troubles were behind us.

At home, I expected the bonding I’d been waiting for to finally take shape. Instead, whenever he was close to me, he was too sleepy to latch. My husband took over bottles and diaper changes while I reluctantly pumped and washed pump parts. I felt removed from the work of caring for my own child. Poor sleep and lingering pain didn’t help my attitude, and I had to fight to mentally reframe what we were going through to keep from sliding into despair.

I grieved the time I felt I was missing with him. His dad could get him to take a bottle, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t breastfeed the way I wanted to. I was still too weak to lift his car seat, and I worried I’d use it wrong and he wouldn’t be able to breathe. I didn’t feel comfortable taking him out of the house without my husband. As much love as I felt for our baby, I felt incapable of caring for him the way I wanted to.

Over the next week, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone again and again. I reached out to family and friends for advice on breastfeeding and spent every free moment researching. I pushed through exhaustion and stress by sheer force of will. We did round after round of “triple feeding,” where we nursed, bottled, and pumped back to back, and by the time we finished one session, it was almost time for the next. I kept reminding myself that he would get stronger, his jaw would grow, and we would become more efficient. A nurse came for a home visit, and we saw a lactation consultant who helped build our confidence and skills. I made myself take him out alone for lunch with a friend so I could finally practice with the car seat.

Our son turned one month old this week. There’s still plenty of room for me to improve, but I feel far more confident than I did just a couple of weeks ago, and I can feel the bond I’d been longing for finally taking shape. I underestimated how much the delivery complications and our separation would affect my mental health, and I don’t think there’s any way to prepare for that. I’m so grateful for my husband, our family and friends, and the medical providers, including a NICU nurse who noticed what no one else did, who helped carry us through.

I used to think our bond would be formed in a single moment, the one I had rehearsed so many times, with him on my chest, saying exactly the right thing. What I’ve learned is that it was never going to be one moment. It was waking every three hours all night, every tangled IV line, and all the times I made myself try again when it might have been easier to give up. Somewhere in all of that, without me noticing, the love I was waiting for was being built.

If I could go back to the first moment, I wouldn’t say “I’m sorry.” I’d tell him that we were just getting started, and that I’m going to spend the rest of my life loving him and showing up for him.