Caring for a Premature Infant

Within hours of our son’s premature birth, my body began to change.  Its metamorphosis was a strong 'painful' reminder that the most important job in caring for our son was here. ... Though our son was being hospitalized in the world renown Sick Kids Hospital NICU, in Toronto, his feeding routine was now at the top of my to-do list, my top priority, my reason for being. It was March, 1979.

The miraculous liquid my body was now producing was more than just mother’s milk.  It was an elixir. In a pamphlet published by the Toronto’s Sick Children’s Hospital Foundation, in early 1979, and delivered  by mail to our home, I soon learned the startling contribution my milk, otherwise known as preterm milk, was making for our baby.  Since that time, I have learned more about the incredible significance of  pre-term as compared to its 'cousin',  term milk.  Scientists, in the 70's had discovered that pre-term milk contained higher levels of nitrogen, an element critical for the building blocks of human growth and development.  It was the custom made food for a preemie!  The best available. The brain would get a ‘head’ start because of this boost. Preterm milk was adapting to our son's health crisis. ...This incredible research stated that fresh milk was better than frozen since  an ingredient in human milk was rendered inactive when the milk was frozen. With science as my teacher, I began in earnest, collecting and storing my milk, every two –three hours, the life-saving liquid for our baby-some frozen out of necessity, but most not. My husband would deliver milk supplies-daily- to Sick Kids, a daily exhausting  two hour commute on top of other driving  and duties he had to do. When our baby returned to his birth hospital,-  a couple of weeks later, I visited him daily, regardless of how exhausted I was, to give him a fresh supply of milk and to hold him. Holding him, touching him also brought about physiological changes in our son’s tiny body thereby helping him gain precious weight. At his lowest point, he weighed just two pounds, 12 ounces.

The realization soon hit me that our son was a fetus, developing outside the womb, the human incubator that had nurtured him for so long and then without warning had expelled him, so precipitously. He had missed out on the third trimester when all systems –skeletal, musculature, nervous- begin their journey towards maturity, strength and function. The reality that our son could die, at any moment, began to dawn on us. Would we become parents someday?  His lungs were frail and underdeveloped, requiring a respirator. The doctors worried about scar tissue developing with prolonged use.  A tube leading to his stomach fed him the vital nutrients from all sources... At his gestational age, the sucking reflex was not developed... Oxygen levels were monitored daily... Too much of the life giving gas could blind him; too little could harm him, mentally.  His prognosis two days after his birth:  10% chance of survival, gave his parents pause. With a higher than normal birth weight of three pounds, two ounces, he had at least something in his favour.

Expressing milk manually was becoming ineffective, messy and time consuming. Without the ‘help’ of a baby to produce the much needed milk, in the quantities needed, renting a machine was the next logical step, expediting the task of  producing and collecting this custom made liquid. Soon after, I discovered there was yet another machine  we could rent that could aid in our son’s transition to nursing!  Bottle feeding was easy; breastfeeding was not!   His arrival home-two months later, one month ahead of his original due date, was a cause to celebrate. It was also my birthday, a fact that  I had forgotten.  How could I remember my birthday? It was our son's birth day that was foremost on our minds.

I was now his primary caregiver, not a visitor as I had been for the past two months. His first day at home was life changing. I had an inner calm that had not manifested itself these past two months as I brought him into the house. ... I would be O.K.  Really, I would. ... I was now officially a mom...