Waiting to bring his newborn home from the hospital, writer Murray Middleton found solidarity in a sleep-deprived, unshaven bunch of bedside hopefuls: the NICU dads.
It’s a horror show in there,” said Jeremy as we waited to be let back into the Birth Centre at the Royal Women’s Hospital. He was clutching a pillow as well as several suitcases. “I had to find a reason to duck out.”
“We’ve done it twice now, mate,” I said, still riding a wave of adrenaline after my partner had managed to naturally birth our second bub, a 4.94-kilogram behemoth, drug-free, following a three-day labour. “Don’t beat yourself up.”
The glass door finally opened for us. I walked Jeremy to his suite and wished him luck. He took a deep breath and puffed his cheeks out, eyes so pink and pleading that I could see the child in him.
The next time I ran into Jeremy was in the Postnatal Ward the following evening. He was in a black hoodie and looked less seasick than 24 hours earlier. We compared notes on our births. His bub was “having some problems breathing”, and was going to have a short stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
I told Jeremy that our first child had “breathing issues” after his birth – neglecting to mention that his lung had collapsed – and that we’d had our own stay in the NICU. Everything, I assured Jeremy, would be fine. We shook hands, as if it would be the last time we ever saw each other.
The next day, everything fell apart. I had already packed the car, done an efficient, Germanic Aldi shop and was preparing to bring the other half of my family home from hospital when my partner called. She said our bub’s respiratory rate was high and his doctors were concerned. Later in the afternoon, scans and blood tests showed fluid on his lungs and the early indicators of an infection. He was placed on antibiotics and transferred to the NICU.
As my partner and I checked in that evening, I found myself using mechanical words down the phone, knowing that I would cry in front of our toddler if I gave more than a series of stunted, dispassionate replies.
Contrary to what I’d told Jeremy, I didn’t feel I had it in me to endure the ultraviolet lights, the sterile smell of hand sanitiser and the tiny, alien-looking infants of the NICU all over again. When I made it into the hospital the next morning, it was our bub’s chubby feet, pinpricked from all the blood tests, that made me want to weep.
I remembered, straight away, my most hated part of NICU life: the cords. There are usually six infants per room and most are hooked up to a cannula and at least three separate monitor leads, resulting in a cacophony of beeping. It’s a confronting soundscape for emotionally frayed parents. Alarms will regularly sound and panic will set in, especially when a baby is red-faced and howling, and nurses are occupied and lights are pulsing.
Trying to hold your child – as oxygen tubes fall out of their nose, and you step on other leads in your panic and they detach, and even more alarms go off – is a horrible thing. It’s why parents often step out of the room: to take a breath that doesn’t feel like a blade being jammed into your ribcage.
Sometimes, when I was stepping out, I’d see Jeremy sterilising lids and bottles in the communal sink. He always seemed to be taking his time. One night, after our bub’s condition had started to improve, I came within metres of approaching to strike up a conversation with Jeremy, but something about his posture – his forlorn slump, or how used to the task he already seemed – made me re-think the idea.
In the lift one morning I asked how everything was going. He said his bub was “going well”. I couldn’t tell if it was blind optimism or not, as, obviously, if his bub were going well, his family would all be at home, in the love bubble.
Another time, I spotted Jeremy in the foyer of the NICU as I was hurrying to the cafeteria and we high-fived, our hands cupping and producing an outrageously loud pop. No words. I could hear Jeremy chuckling as he made his way into the unit, where laughter invariably had to cease.
Being a father in the NICU is about one per cent as difficult as being a mother in there. We don’t have to live on a recliner chair as we try to recover from birth injuries, expressing milk, dealing with cluster feeds, lactation consultants, late-night nurse handovers, shuffling down corridors with swollen feet to change maternity pads. But there is a sombre art to being a NICU dad.
Almost all NICU dads have beards. By halfway through our first week in the unit, Jeremy’s stubble had grown into wispy auburn strands. Shaving, when you could have five more minutes to whisper to your sick child, feels self‑indulgent. One dad in our room would lug his laptop and charger in every morning and work by his daughter’s cot. Other dads trudged in wearing hi-vis fleece in the afternoon and offered their earthy hands through holes in incubators. Others read books out loud to reactionless babies.
The main logistical nightmare at the Women’s Hospital is parking. Tradies and medicos seize most of the spaces in the hospital carpark first thing in the morning, so the $40 weekly “concession” that liaison staff give you when your child is admitted to the NICU doesn’t alleviate much stress. Instead, you’re left hunting for two-hour parks in Melbourne’s Park(!)ville – surely the cruellest of oxymorons – and setting constant reminder alarms on your phone.
I bumped into Jeremy several times as we were on our way in, and out, of the mothership that had become our second home, to move cars. He always sounded chipper, as if his family’s stay were on the cusp of ending, never acknowledging, or perhaps never grasping, the non-linear nature of NICU life.
We’d usually part by chirping “hang in there, mate” slightly awkwardly, neither wanting to overreach into an actual friendship, or delve into the misery of it all.
I felt naked, rather than relieved, when the doctors removed our bub’s leads on his final morning in hospital, my nerves heightening every time I sensed his breathing accelerate and I had no digits on a monitor to rely on.
As my partner and I were shuttling our belongings down to the car, we ran into Jeremy’s wife. I wrote my number on a piece of paper for her, in case he ever wanted to have a beer and talk it all through. Leaving Jeremy behind, I remembered the survivor’s guilt from my first stay in the NICU. Specifically, how I couldn’t look any other parent in the eye as we wheeled our firstborn out.
The guilt was still present second time around. I’d seen a sequel to a horror show that would change me, as a parent, forever. But part of the change was an appreciation of how precious and miraculous a little life is, and what a privilege it is to nurture one, because other parents – through the gravest of godless injustices – never get to.
* Some names and identifying features have been changed to protect the identity of certain parties in this piece.
By Murray Middleton
Illustration by Carla McRae
Published in Ed#748
Murray Middleton is a Vogel Award-winning author whose latest collection of short stories, U Want It Darker, is out now.
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