Dear future intensive care doctors and nurses

My Mummy stares at the tiny clothes in bag that she bought, fizzing with excitement, when she first found out she was pregnant with me. Now she is terrified to tidy them into their drawers in case I don’t make it.

I’ll make it, Mum, I want to tell her. But she can’t hear me, just yet.

I am born at 29 weeks and 5 days. Mummy went through surgery to have me and couldn’t see me before I was whisked away to be ventilated. She longs for me, to see my face, to hold me. My daddy got to see me for a few moments and took some photos; when Mummy saw them, she cried. I was so small and so fragile, and I didn’t look like I would survive. She wanted to be with me.

I am spirited away to be under your care, Future Intensive Care Doctors and Nurses. When you touch me, watch me, monitor me, care for me, you don’t see me as a premature baby with an extra chromosome, you see me as a tiny soul who relies on you to keep living. My crib is beside other miniature, delicate babies with cleft lips, heart defects, cerebral palsy – and you see none of that. You see the life in all of us.

My mummy is brought into Intensive Care in a wheelchair just after midnight, to meet me for the first time. She sees wires, machines, tubes, lights. All this apparatus is normal to you, but it isn’t to her, and she is terrified. The equipment looks in her eyes, monstrous, and like it is suffocating me. I am so, so small. Her heart hurts. I know you’re busy – I know just how busy you are – but it would lift a weight from her if you were able to take a moment to explain, to reassure her, to tell her what I know, which is that you are fighting for me, and won’t let me go.

I spend 9 weeks with you on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and I undergo various procedures. You see me through each one. Your touch is always gentle. Your care is always complete. Your knowledge is extraordinary and when I have grown, I want to be as brave as you.

Now I’m 6 months old and at home and being suffocated with adoration rather than surrounded by wires. My family are delighted and amazed by every small thing I do.
Oh! And that hole in my heart that we were told would most definitely need open heart surgery? It has closed all by itself! The large ventricles in my brain that we were told may need a shunt? Gone!

Dear Future Intensive Care Doctors and Nurses – thank you.

Yours,
Brody

Written by Hannah, Teacher and mum to Fred and Brody