Erin and I naively believed that A would have surgery and that everything would be done, overwith and taken care of. Obviously, our hospital stay did not go as we had planned. A had another apneatic spell in recover, which scared the sh*t out of us. A's pain medication was sorely inadequate and he suffered immensely after the first day. A's intestines did not "wake up" quickly, and we spent an extra 3-5 days in the hospital. I didn't end up going back to work (again) this week. Now, we are home, and it is evident that A is still healing. He has considerable pain at times when he is passing stuff through his colon (it is very small from never having been used and must stretch out...)
So, this isn't entirely over. Like I mentioned above, A still has colon-stretching to do, which causes him pain. We also have follow up clinic appointments, and breastfeeding is not going well (at all) either. Still, the bulk of incident is over. Three months, gone. those first three months were supposed to be something other than what they were, and now they are over.
I don't think I will ever recover from the pain I have over how A's life began. Our time in the NICU was an extremely painful experience for me filled with confusion, anger, and raw hurting. I believe I will never forget those first few days, and then the day after day of dragging on-desperately wishing to start life at home with my new baby. (For the record, I'm also still irritated with people that tried to console me by saying that at least we'd only be there for a few weeks rather than months etc.... even now, I think such statements are minimalizing and a bit heartless - evidence that the experience is, indeed, still raw.)
Months of changing an ostomy bag, of hoping that no one comments in a public restroom when we had to empty it. Months of hoping that people didn't see my baby as inferior to other people's babies. I didn't (don't) want people feeling sorry for us. I didn't want people thinking my child's body was "weird".
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