Reflections: Baby Bonding

One of the problems facing new mothers of multiples often goes un-addressed.

It’s a subject that is almost taboo in nature, yet it is one that is so pressing that something really needs to be done about the lack of support and available information.

I suppose the reasoning behind it is that most other mothers and the general public, even the subject’s own family, just will not understand where the new mother is coming from.

Most people will be quick to pass judgement on the mother based on the subject matter.

What I am referring to is the question in most new mothers of multiple’s minds, of when she will be able to bond with her children.

There, I’ve said it. It really doesn’t sound very good does it? I suppose that’s why so very few of us really will talk about it.

It's because of the lack of information and support out there, that I feel that I need to give it a try.

It’s different when you have only one baby to bond with. I know, because I have a 12 year old in addition to my triplets.

It was very different the first time. I was able to see my first child as they were taking him to the nursery, shortly after he was born.

This was allowed even in spite of the emergency c-section that it took to get him safely into the world.

My only worry and fret at the time was that it was a few hours between our first meeting and our next.

I was kept in recovery for a few hours after the surgery, and allowed to come down off of the epidural and recover from my emergency c-section before finally being released to a normal hospital room.

I was allowed to have my baby in my room as much as we could tolerate each other.

Of course, being a first time mom, I kept him at my side as much as possible.

It had been love at first sight and I was reluctant to let him out of my sight even for his bath!

Fast-forward eleven years and I found myself pregnant with triplets. That in itself is enough to show what a difference this pregnancy was going to be!

Almost immediately, I felt the difference between this and my first pregnancy.

For one, there was never a time when I knew for a fact that I would be able to successfully carry all three babies to term safely.

I had three times the raging hormones while pregnant, and three times the chance for post-partum depression from the drastic changes my body would go through after delivery.

That's not to mention the strain on myself mentally over having to handle my very high risk pregnancy along with trying to work as long as my body (and doctors) would allow!

I found myself micro-managing my body and my pregnancy, trying to gain some control over the changes that were taking place.

All of this was done in hopes that I would be able to give my babies a fighting chance at survival.

I had to come to terms with the fact that I had to remain cautiously optimistic for both them and myself in order for us all to get through this.

I spent a lot of time learning how to tell the babies apart just from seeing them on the ultra-sound screen and from the scant pictures I would glean from the ultra-sound techs.

I discovered their personalities even before they were born and became intimately familiar with their every known trait, good and not so great!

Nothing could have prepared me for what would happen once their birth date arrived.

I had been in as much control as anyone could hope for in my situation.

My doctor had set goals for me and my pregnancy. I had followed through with them to the best of my ability (for those of you who have been there, you know that we really cannot control what our bodies do at this point.)

I proudly walked from the Schumpert parking garage to the third floor labor & delivery to check in for my c-section.

I even was able to sit up and talk to the nurses and everyone in the operating room while I waited for the rest of the staff to arrive and my surgery to begin.

Once the anesthesiologist arrived, I realized that this wasn’t going to be anything close to like my first c-section was.

To begin with, they wanted to do a spinal instead of an epidural. And for some reason, they just couldn’t get it to work.

After about an hour, they finally decided to put me totally out, which meant I was supposed to be asleep for the entire procedure.

Neither my husband nor my father would be able to be there for the babies birth, and I wouldn’t know if the babies were okay until I woke up.

My body just didn’t do well during delivery, and I had to be resuscitated several times.

Each time they woke me up, I was able to hear exactly what was happening and exactly what was being done for me and my babies. It made the whole thing even scarier.

When I was officially allowed to wake up, I remember asking after my babies and being told that they were all okay.

That was it. I would spend the next 24 hours in recovery because of all of the complications and problems that I had.

I didn’t get to see my babies except when someone from the NICU sent me pictures of each of them in their little beds all taped up and wired to machines that weren't in the picture.

Those pictures made them look so very big, but they really weren't. My babies just didn’t seem real to me yet because I had yet to meet them.

Nobody could tell me how they were really doing, and I missed out on everything that a Mum normally gets to do and take part in during their babies first days.

The babies were born about 9a.m. Monday morning, and I wouldn’t get to see them for real until Tuesday night late.

I had finally had enough of hearing about everyone else getting to see them (before me,) and I made my husband go find a wheel chair and take me down to meet my tiny trio in spite of the late hour.

I have never felt so isolated or detached from my children. I had spent the past 8 months with them and those hours apart seemed like eternity.

I lay in my hospital bed with my pain button wondering if they would even know me. Would I know them?

Were they really okay or had they been telling me that because I was too sick to know the truth?

I just didn’t know what to expect, and NOTHING could have prepared me for how I felt now.

When my husband finally wheeled me into the NICU, I had to try and stand a bit just so I could see into their isolettes, which really hurt.

I was finally able to see them, though. I thought that would make everything better somehow, I really did.

The problem was, I couldn’t hold them yet because of all the wires and tubes attached them at that point.

Besides that, I could barely stand because I had spent the last day and a half in recovery hooked up to wires and machines of my own.

I had to leave them there, lying in their little beds alone, and return to my room, which was the saddest, most lonely feeling I think that I have ever had.

That night, I decided that my staples and breathing treatments and all were not going to keep me away from my babies any longer.

I vowed to find a way to get mobile again (my legs were still tingly from the surgery) and find some way to get to hold them and care for them, NICU. staples and wires or not.

After my family left for the night, and I was alone in my room, I spent nearly the entire night learning to move around, sit up and to stand.

It took a while, but I was finally able to walk the 10 feet from my hospital bed to the bathroom and back again.

I had those three pictures of my tiny trio lined up across the tray that was at the foot of my bed for motivation.

It had really bothered me that they looked so different in person than they had in those photographs.

I wanted nothing more than to actually get to hold them and meet them for real instead of having to peer through the glass/plastic of their little isolettes.

The next day, I had the nurse take me down to the NICU and leave me there.

I spent as much time as the nurses would allow with my babies. I even was finally able to hold both of my boys.

My daughter would be nearly a week old before I finally found a nurse who would let me hold her. It was a very frustrating and scary time for me.

All three babies had their own wires, some of which did different things.

Then the boys had to have their IV’s redone into the vein in their head because their arms just couldn't support them anymore.

Each of the boys also had to sun themselves under the heat lamps. It was very overwhelming for me and them, and all the while I was still recovering from their birth as well.

I did everything that I could think of to try and bond with them.

Because there were three of them, and we were all sick in our own ways, it felt very different from when I had my eldest son.

I worried that they babies wouldn’t need me or might even begin to prefer their nurses instead of me.

I worried that something would happen to one or all of them when I was released from the hospital.

Yes, they sent me home way before my babies. I went home the Friday after they were born.

The babies wouldn’t come home for another three weeks. I had to go home to an empty nursery.

I know it must sound silly, but is nothing sadder than an empty nursery. It is just depressing.

I would spend the next few weeks getting up each day and driving the three minutes down the street to the hospital to spend as much time as I was allowed with my babies.

I made sure that either myself or my family made it to as many feedings as possible.

I scheduled everything around the babies’ schedule, what I called “Lock-out” time which was really shift change in the NICU and pick-up time for my son’s school.

This was the only way I knew of to try and bond with them. I felt that they were getting slighted in that respect because of their extended hospital stay.

I still didn’t have that warm fuzzy feeling that I had with my eldest son.

I didn’t have the time to actually sit down and think about it having it, or rather I didn’t allow myself the time.

I felt that if I kept forging along, helping them reach their tiny milestones, that in time we would all get to be together and at home and all would fall into place.

I know it must sound awful, to say that the warm fuzzy feelings just weren’t there.

You have to understand that our bodies are literally pushed to the max to carry multiples and having the added stress of a complicated delivery made things much more difficult.

Then you have to add in the normal “Baby Blue’s” period of what has become labeled as post- partum depression that should have kicked in.

Did I have it? I honestly don’t know. I didn’t have time to stop and smell that sort of rose at the time.

I do know that Mums who have multiple deliveries are more prone to having it based on the extra amounts of hormones in their bodies.

I do know that my body had to adjust back to normal after all of that stress and all of the hormones.

I also know that my babies needed me and that I needed them.

And that if I stopped and allowed any sort of emotion to take over at the time, that I ran risk of losing my mind and that none of us could afford that!

I had my moments, don’t get me wrong. Nobody is perfect, and I of all people understood that I was far from it.

I had allowed myself to push all emotion out of the way to the point that I was surprised at my reaction to the possibility of something happening to one of the babies.

It was after we were all home together and I had been rocking my daughter to sleep in the glider.

I had gotten up to take her to the nursery, and my cat had decided that he was tired of being neglected and had taken to weaving in and out of my legs while I was trying to walk.

He tripped me, and I fell into the wall. I managed to keep my balance enough to prevent the baby from getting hurt, but it scared me so badly I couldn’t stop crying.

Afterwards, it really bothered me that I hadn’t realized how much I loved her before.

Somewhere in all the wires, feedings, NICU visits and carpool, I had managed to bond with my babies.

I had been so busy overcompensating for everything that I hadn’t even noticed.

It sounds odd, even callous maybe, but it’s the truth. In retrospect, I don’t know why it surprised me so, just that it did at the time.

I had been taught during my pregnancy to slow down and eliminate all sources of stress from my life in some attempt to try and keep my body from going into early labor.

After the babies were born, I had quite forgotten to follow that rule for whatever reason.

I don’t even know if it would have been possible really to do so, but I wish I had tried it!

I thought of all of this last night, while holding my eldest triplet on my chest after he woke up during the night from a gas bubble.

He was snoring quietly, and I could have put him back into his little bed, but I just couldn’t do it.

I had that nice warm fuzzy feeling… the one that makes you never want to let your baby go.

And, as we lay there in my bed, I tried to remember the first time I had felt it with him and I couldn’t.

That, to me, is upsetting. I know that it’s not my fault really, but I honestly, really can’t remember.

I remember everything else. I remember insisting on hanging the only family portrait that we have of all three of us in their little beds (it’s of my husband, son and I at faire-we are all in our red yeoman outfits and are standing in the artillery garden on industrial row where the cannons are kept-Bregon is waving at the camera with his hankie and we are all laughing.)

I remember having to explain that it was the only family photo that we had and exactly why we were wearing renaissance era clothing to just about everyone who took care of the babies and some who didn't.

I remember us giving them their first bottles and how we had to teach them how to eat from it.

I remember having to demand that my daughter be taken off of her gavage feeding and be allowed to take a bottle only a week before she came home…

I remember the waking up in the middle of the night wondering if the babies were okay and my husband reminding me that while my kids are my happy thought, that we are the babies happy thoughts too and that everything was going to be alright.

Somewhere during all of that, I managed to bond with all three of my babies in spite of all of my fears and worries.

That warm fuzzy feeling crept in when I least expected it, and I missed it.

Somehow, I think it had always really been there, but that I had been too busy worrying to notice.

Looking back, I think it must have happened the first time I got a glimpse of my new family portrait on that ultra-sound screen.

I didn’t know it then, but that little fuzzy feeling wasn’t really shock or surprise.

It was the warm fuzzy feeling a mom get when they meet their babies for the first time and I had been too scared at the prospect of them not making it to allow myself to feel it.

I hope other mom’s out there understand that sometimes, it takes time to bond with your babies, especially if there are more than one involved.

It will come eventually and maybe, just maybe, you will find that it was always there from the beginning, no matter what anyone else will tell you.