What range of emotions did you go through and did you feel cheated of a normal pregnancy?

[DontlookatmeImshy]

Ds2 was a 35 weeker so not particularly prem compared with most people here but i still have this wide range of emotions;

being happy and relieved that he is now home safely, feeling guilty that it may have been something i did/didn't do that made him arrive early, feeling bitter towards/jealous of other woman i see who are obviously about to pop a full term baby out, and still coming to terms with how fast it all happened - despite being in hospital anyway I didn't realise he was coming until i was 8cm dilated - I thought i was just constipated!!!, are just a few examples.

I assume most of these feeling are normal but wondered how other people felt after their premmie arrived.

My DS was born at 31+4, just went into labour spontaneously. He was on SCBU for five weeks. I feel like I missed out on everything - holding the baby after he is born, not five days later, being able to successfully breastfeed (in the long term, because DS appears to be healthy, this was definitely the worst thing - I crave the chance to do it again, successfully this time). Missed out on five weeks of leave before the baby was born, getting things ready, missed out on last two months of being pregnant - I physically missed being pregnant for such a long time after he was born because I suppose my body knew I should still be. I used to find it difficult when people talked about their full-term birth and post-birth experiences and thought, you have no idea, you cannot understand what I have been through. I found it very difficult in the beginning being with people who were breastfeeding because I felt like such an enormous failure for the fact I couldn't do it properly, despite all my hard work at expressing and trying to feed him - just didn't have the milk.

Dontlook - my son was a good weight too (4lb2) and quite a few people, including members of the medical profession, gave me the "ooh probably a good thing he didn't go term" - no it F wasn't!!!!! I just don't think people have a clue what they are saying when they make comments like that. The other one which really pissed me off while DS was in SCBU was - "at least you can get some rest while he's there - wait till he comes home", to which I swiftly replied, "no, I'm expressing every three hours day and night and taking myself back and forth to hospital twice a day". That usually shut them up.

i am only on day 11 of my boy born at 27 weeks weighing 2lb 8 oz
and the main emotion i have felt is desperate pleas of please don't die, please don't die over and over again. (it was touch and go for the first fdew days)
now he seems to be improving i am just grateful he is still here.
everyone said you'll find it difficult going home without your baby, well i wasnt expecting to go home with a baby in July so i didn't mind.
Yes i wish i was still pregnant but felt too ill anyway that again i don't mind that i'm not.
September seems along way off till i can bring him home but i just keep thinking at least he's still here they can keep him till xmas aslong as he's ok.
I'm sure as time goes on my emotions will be up and down but that's just how i feel most of the time - just so so lucky and grateful to have my perfect and tiny little boy still here

I felt so cheated out of the whole pregnancy experience. From people commenting on how tiny my bump was (he had IUGR) and me having to explain he wasn't growing right to being hospitalised on bed rest because of my bp 3 wks before he was born. I had been looking forward to getting the nursery ready and preparing for the birth but never got a chance to do any of that. Was even told by one of the midwives to wait until he was born, which I think was her nice way of warning me he might not survive.
Shocked and terrified when I was given a couple of hours to prepare for a c-section when a scan showed problems. It was all so surreal when he was born at 34 wks at 2lb 12 and this tiny, blue thing was passed over me and whisked up to NICU. I honestly didn't feel like I'd had a baby and didn't get to see him for 12 hrs as I got very ill with preeclampsia after the birth. All I could do was bawl my eyes out when I was finally wheeled in my bed to see him. I hardly slept a wink that night. Hearing all the other babies on the ward, feeling empty as mine wasn't with me and not knowing what was happening with him.
The next few weeks were just pure exhaustion and I felt guilty that my body couldn't carry my baby and after three weeks of expressing, couldn't feed him either as my milk stopped. I felt robbed of the whole motherhood experience by having to even ask permission to hold him. The bradys and desats were terrifying. I could recognise the sounds of the beeps on the monitors for what they are even now. We lived for the milestones - the ounces of weight, off cpap, the increasing mls of feed, into an open cot. Finally after 4 wks we got him home. I don't think I properly bonded with him until a couple of weeks after he got home.
Looking back 8 months on I feel relief that he's healthy and that we're both alive as without medical intervention, neither of us would be here. I've let go of the guilt and recently ran into a friend of a friend and we both realised we'd gone through the same thing and it was so nice talking to someone who understood and had the same experience.
Yes, people can make thoughtless comments at times. I still get told how "lucky" I am not to have stretchmarks. I'd rather be riddled with them and not have the two of us to go through what we did. I don't think I've ever cried so much in my life during the pregnancy and immediately after and I'm petrifed of getting pregnant again as there's a good chnace it will happen again. Now I feel blessed to have my son and so proud of what he's been through and the little fighter that he is. He brings so much joy into my life and the rocky start he had has made me appreciate him even more.

I'm almost seven months down the line but tbh the feelings I had back when this thread was started have got worse in some respects.

I know that I am lucky that developmentally DD seems to doing fine and doesn't seem to have any health problems but I still feel very angry that I was deprived of my full 40 weeks, of being able to hold my baby when I wanted etc.

Like a lot of you I feel guilty that I failed to keep DD inside and guilty for leaving her every night alone on NICU.

I feel really strongly that there should be some form of counselling and better support offered to parents of prem babies.

Hello all, can't believe I've only just found this! Read through most of the thread and although it's incredibly sad that so many parents and their babies have been through so much it's reassuring to know that others know how it feels... amongst my circle of friends I sometimes feel pretty isolated in this respect.

My prem was born at 30 weeks (due to pre-eclampsia), over 3 years ago! I am thankful after a rocky first year that he is now a very well, happy & active pre-schooler, and no one would ever guess his start in life. But not a day goes by when I don't remember it- and I still struggle with the guilt of having "failed" him, and the sadness of being apart those early months while he was in SCBU. His birth was so utterly different to the birth I'd hoped for I still to this day have issues reconciling it all. BUT I am incredibly grateful he is healthy now.

I find at the moment quite a few close friends are pregnant and I feel such a mix of emotions as they get to term and have healthy babies who are with them straight away... I am so happy for them but I get incredibly nervous as each of their pregnancies progress, and deep down yes I know I'm jealous that I haven't had the experience of having a baby born and stay with me, full-term & healthy.

We went on to have DC2, and we nearly did achieve a full-term pregnancy but PE struck again and although born at 36 weeks she needed a week in SCBU... She has cystic fibrosis which partially explains the breathing issues she had.

I am not sure the grief of missing out of a full-term pregnancy and/or natural birth will ever fully leave, I am just learning to cope with it and be gentle on myself- and try desperately every day to focus on the present (just hard when reminders crop up, birthdays, new births etc.)

Huge hugs to you all xxxxx

I totally understand all of these posts. I'm so sorry for those of you whose babies were in NICU or had miscarriages.
My DS was born at 36+1 and wasn't in NICU at all and went home with me so I consider myself very lucky indeed. But even so it's been a hard 3 months. I felt cheated of the last weeks, of my first weeks on maternity leave, but also worried about why he'd been born early. He was also seemingly small for dates (was born at the same weight estimated at scan 2 weeks earlier) and I worry that any further pregnancy will be the same or worse. That i won't be able to relax in a further pregnancy.

I feel bad that I couldn't go to term (and I very nearly did, so it's irrational) and I feel strangely jealous somehow of women who go to term, like I'm somehow inadequate in compariosn. And this is all irrational and I know I'm so lucky. but the feelings are there. I also feel strangely that I REALLY want another baby cos i want to have another shot at doing it "right".

Totally agree with you about the counselling, rascal 1979. All these posts just sum up my feelings completely.
TTC no.2 and terrified of it all happening again if we do.

Agree with you as well counselling should be offered. Although I don't feel guilty anymore, I can't help but take it as a personal insult when I hear about women going on about bf - best for baby, women just don't want to do it anymore, bonding - I would have loved to have been able to bf and I feel less of a mummy that I couldn't. And as for the competitiveness of women and labour - I somehow feel inadequent that I never even experienced a labour pain.
I have four friends that got preg since me and I'm so jealous of their bumps - at 5 months they look bigger than I did before giving birth.
Since having pre-eclampsia, I'm terrified about something going wrong health-wise with me. I think what scared me most was immediately after the c-s and my bp started to go sky high. They were firing stuff in me that wasn't working and I could hear they were getting worried. It brought it home to me for the 1st time that I'm not immortal. Then there were the months after when my bp stayed high for a while (runs in the family too which doesn't help)
Then there's all the worry developmentally. We have our prem babies longer as babies than full-termers. A friend recently made a comment that someone he knows had a baby the same time as me and hers is almost like a toddler, whereas my ds is still very baby. As he had assymetrical IUGR he seems behind on his body movements compared to even his corrected age.
Hope you don't mind me rambling on but it's nice to get it out a bit. I can't talk to my dp about this as he thought I was really brave with the way I handled it all and don't want to disappoint him. I feel bad because I know I'm lucky and that some women don't have such a good outcome that my ds has had.

To anyone of you saying you are worried about getting PreE in another pregnancy, it maybe worth asking your doctor about taking Aspirin. The aptly named baby aspirin is about half a tablet (1/4 dose) and doesn't have a negative effect on the baby like using it as a painkiller and it's been shown to help in these high risk pregnancies.

Don't know about other people but i found, especially at first, being almost obsessed with the WHY. I thought so much and wondered so much about why he was 4 weeks early and of course there's no answer. Which is good in a way because it means in another pregnancy I may go to term and so I'm very grateful for that, but it still obsessed me a little. I also feel guilty for having all these emotions and feeling cheated of a "normal" pregnancy cos of course 36 weeks is so wonderful compared to people who go into labour much earlier. I know I'm very lucky really.
For those of you who had early babies that weren't in incubators, did you also find the first month or so really hard and yet the medical profession doesn't even really consider them prem, even though of course there's a world of difference taking a baby home under 5lb to a full term baby.

God I thought it was just me who felt like this!

My dd1 was born at 27 weeks. On day 2 of her life she was so ill she had a massive brain haemorrhage. No-one expected her to live. She was so unstable. My husband and I were totally shell shocked, and just spent all hours sitting by her incubator on the NNU. Against all odds (even a Consultant called it 'miraculous') dd1 did survive, and is a total treasure. Due to the brain injury she has CP, hydrocephalus and epilepsy. She is starting to walk, and chats away constantly. She is 7. She recently had an op to correct her squint. She has GDD, but is making steady progress with her learning.

I went through feelings of terrible guilt, wondering what I could have doen to help her stay in utero. This was despite being so careful during the pregnancy, and being monitored, following recurrent miscarriage. I would have done anything to change places with her when at 2 months old she had brain surgery to fit a shunt for the hydrocephalus. I had a dreadful cold the day of the op, and could not even kiss her as she was taken away to the surgery for fear of passing on the infection. I stood looking through the window of the NNU nursery with tears streaming down my face watching my lovely dh and various nurses kissing dd1 as she was prepared to go off.

We sat through blood transfusions, ventilation, nitric oxide being given etc etc. And I kep thinking - despite huge admiration and gratitude to the fantastic staff - it just shouldn't be like this.

One of the worst moments was when we took dd1 back to hospital for one of her many admissions in that 1st year, for bronchiolitis or seizures. DD1 was on a Paeds ward and a very nasty woman with a son on the ward came over, peered at her, and asked why she was so small, when the age on her notes was such and such. I explained she was prem. And sick. Woman said 'oh, did you drink and take drugs when you were pregnant, that's why they are prem isn't it?'. Stupid woman - I felt enough guilt anyway without her casting her (totally ignorant and misguided) accusations at me. But I was so gobsmacked I just sat there.

I still feel sad on her birthday, but I so grateful to have a wondrous little being as my daughter, who has changed my life totally, and enriched it in ways I could never have had imagined.

But I did, for a long time, feel 'robbed' of the pregnancy and delivery I dreamt of. And of sitting up in bed afterwards, all rosy cheeked and luminous, feeling very clever, and having loads of visitors cooing over an 8lb baby! (dd1 was 2lbs). But there you are!

Hi, I'm new to all this but my little monster also arrived earl at 32 wks. He had a tough ride in special care and neede cpap, a lumberpuncture, a blood tranfussion, he caught several infections and had a hole in his heart!

I must admit at the time we just got on with it, what choice do you have? Even though he was a c section delivery under general anistetic I was up and about in less than 12 hours and driving again within 3 weeks. I'm not sure any of those things were good for my body but my little one needed me and so it was a case of stuff the pain and sore bits i need to get on with this!!

I struggle when I talk to Mummies who have had fab pregnancies and easy natural delievries. I also struggle as i get told another friend is pregnant without even trying (we have been trying for number 2 for over 2 years, with fertility treatment for over a year). I worry that maybe its my bodies way of telling me I shouldn't have another one!

I do however feel blessed with the cheeky monster I have and wish anyone else who has had a prem baby all the love in the world and the strength to attack all the obsticles that come with are extra special children!!

Hello all.
I had to have my twins delivered at 31 weeks. They are now in incubators.
I feel happy one minute and really sad the next.
Everytime I go and see them I blame myself for them being so ill.
I have to express milk, and then it gets fed to them through a syringe.
One of the twins heart rate goes from one extreme to another!
I look into their eyes, and wonder if they have any disablties (the docs have told us they are fine).
I am staying in a ronald mcdonald house, as their is no point in my husband taking paternity leave until they are home which is december!
I am on my own all day, in a country where I cannot speak their language!
I just want to take them home and start being a proper family!

I am staying in a ronald mcdonald house as we live 20 miles away from the nearest hospital.

Hi ellac - didn't want your post to go unanswered. Hope you are holding up ok. It is the hardest time especially when on your own. You have to keep positive and keep thinking when you are expressing how much you are helping your dts get stronger. What weights were they? Have you decided on names. Which country are you in?

I went through the exact same emotions - my ds was born at 32 weeks and in hospital for a month. He was also tube fed and one of the hardest things was getting up in the middle of the night to express milk - sitting on my own in our dining room desperate to get more than a few drops of milk out. Eventually was given domperidone and this helped lots.

I'm not on here very often but will try and check back later.

Keep positive (or try to)

Hi Ellac

My DD was born at 30+6 and weighed a tiny 2lb 1oz. She is now home and doing really well - still tiny at 12lb 11oz (at almost 10mths old!) but developmentally she is advacnced if anything.

I too remember looking at her and worrying myself silly in case she had a disability.

This is the worst time and I really feel for you being away from your husband. My Husband savved hios paternity leave for when DD came home and with hindsight even if he could have been there one day through the week or a coupl eof afternoons it would have been much better. I wish now he had taken some time off even if it was without pay. Could your DH take holidays?

You are doing really well expressing for them. Keep at it regularly and through the night. It is tiring BUT ift is essential to keep your milk supply up.

If they are well enough then lots of skin to skin - every day! will help you to bond with them and also increase your milk supply dramatically. Skin to skin also helps to stablise heart and breathing rates.

Drink pleny of fluids and try to eat as much as you can - although I know how difficult this is.

Speak to the hopsital Breast feeding co-ordinator - insist on it as she will give you som eadbvice and pointers on keeping your mikl supply up

Try to talk to some of the other mums on the unit. This was the single most helpful thing for me to do. The nurses and yourfamily anf riends don't understand fully what you are going through unless they have been there and experienced a premature birth so althought they can support you it's not the same. I often found people s comments upsetting and you don't get this from the other prem mums cos they know how you feel!

DD was born the week before Xmas and peoplpe bought me baby's first Xmas cards etc and I was horrified They only meant well but it was so upsetting she wasn't supposed to be here yet 2008 will be her first xmas.
Which hospital are you at?

YOu are doing so well coping especially on your own. Thigs will get better although I know it seems such a long road at the moment. DD has been home 8 mths now and when we were in hospital it felt like she would nver come home BUT SHE DD and so will your DT.

Thinking of you and will check in on here to see how you are doing xx

Hi. In germany.

james was 1290g and edward was 1205g.

feeling a bit better today. had a really good cry, and met people in the ronald mcdonald house who have babies in a lot worse situation as me (so trying to put it into perspective!), and met an american lady so have someone to talk to and understand!)

thanks for your message.

ellac

Hi ellac and congratulations on the birth of your beautiful boys. Would suggest you take a look at www.bliss.org.uk and www.blissmessageboard.org.uk - there are others there. Hope to hear much more about them.

x

Hi my DD was born at 31 weeks and I felt the same way, was plodding along happy being pregnant, looking forward to shortly starting maternity leave when suddenly I was in hospital in labour. All the girls from my antenatal class were still attending classes, waiting for their baby to arrive and here I was at home with a deflated stomach and a baby in SCBU.

Whenever they moaned about being overdue I felt like screaming "do you know how lucky you are! I would have given anything to be overdue!".

Now of course I know when we get pregnant again (please god!)

Forgot to finish that message, when I get pregnant again I won't enjoy it as I'll be counting the days as they pass, knowing that even if your scan at 12 weeks is ok,things can still go wrong!

Clairemac2004 don't want to put you off, but you're right. This pregnancy has been awful - I'm totaly symptom free! - I can't relax and enjoy it, I've been told not to ignore any BH I get so that we don't miss early labour and it's a good job I was told that as I went into labour last Friday at 24 + 5 weeks! Thankfully they've managed to stave it off although I'm still getting contractions. I would swap my symptom free pregnancy for an over due pregnancy with varicose veins, all day sickness all pregnancy etc.

Ellac - have just noticed this thread, and saw that you are in Germany. I had my premature twins in Germany too (born in week 32, 1.95 kg and 2.4 kg), and really sympathise with your situation, compounded by language difficulties. What part of Germany are you in? I gave birth near Munich (still live in Munich).

Congratulations on their birth by the way, am sure you have two beautiful babies hiding under the wires! And well done for expressing milk; not fun, but you're doing all you can for them.

It's hard to imagine right now with the birth being so recent, but your babies will grow, and grow, and one day people will be amazed when you tell them they were "premature, actually". The tallest, sweetest boy in my twins' creche was born in week 30. I never knew, until chatting by chance to his mum.

Thanks for the message shiner. the boys are in homburg hospital. they both weigh over 5lbs now, so are doing really well. edward has a low red blood cell count, so are keeping them in for a bit longer! they would have been allowed home last weekend if it wasn't for that! i have been told that they will need to see a physiotherapist (because they are not symmetrical!) and a paeditrician. Is this normal for prem babies?am still expressing and am looking forward to taking them home maybe this week!

It seems there is no "normal" for premature babies, since they all vary so greatly in how the early birth affects them. We saw this with our own twins; daughter was absolutely fine when born (the usual jaundice etc, but nothing worrying), and son was quite poorly. My twins have seen a cardiologist (son), physiotherapist (both), neurologist (both), opthalmologist (daughter, because she squints). I thought all babies had to see a paediatrician?

However, now the doctors have all signed them off as being fine (DD has glasses for the squint). I know we have been very fortunate, but it's amazing what babies can cope with, and overcome.

When we were in the thick of worry about ours after the birth, a friend commented that one never stops worrying about one's children. Even the parents of full-term babies will, unfortunately, have things to worry them senseless!

It is sooo hard when babies have to stay in hospital, but it really is the best place until they are stable. Ours slept all the time in SCBU, so we used to joke that they didn't actually notice we weren't always there! Hope your twins can come home soon, ellac, they will enjoy catching up on all the cuddles from their parents!

Take care of yourself, too.