A Story of a Premature Baby

When my child came to the world with only twenty-seven weeks of gestation, besides being extremely premature, she was a baby that was too small for her gestational age, so the following days after her birth were very complicated for everybody. My life was in danger if I continued on with the pregnancy, and my daughter’s life was as well, due to her malnutrition too.

My daughter needed a lot of substitute techniques in order to survive, including a respirator, and during the first days there wasn’t any definite diagnosis besides the hours that she had already gained.

In the successive days of the birth, for reasons that I do not know, my high arterial pressure did not regulate itself without medication, which is why the doctors assumed the decision that it would not be convenient that I see my baby in those circumstances. They also didn’t allow me to be near my husband except for a few moments a day, the only information that I go about how my baby was doing was reduced down to that she was still on the respirator and that at the moment her condition was stable.

As you can understand while I was under the calming effects of the antihypertensive medications, the anguish of being away from my daughter was attenuated, but as they went reducing the doses, the lack of contact made me almost unbearable.

When they finally let me see my Andrea, eight days had gone by without my being able to see her and she no longer had the respirator but she did have a lot of electrodes adhered to her body and an IV from which she was fed through. The love and the pain that I felt in those moments is something indescribable.

I remember looking at her, and leaning my hands and face on the incubator. She was a perfect baby, but her risk of not surviving was still too high, so I had no other option but to conform myself, although I could not resist the desire to touch her. 

When I was allowed to leave the hospital, my daughter still had two months of gestation left, meaning my husband and I had to go home without her. That was the worse part.

Although we went to see her several times a day, it was something that was always terrible traumatic to leave her alone in an environment that was not very welcoming.