The unique pain and privilege of loving a premature baby.

Ask any mother, and she will tell you that nothing can prepare you for the birth of a child. There is simply nothing that compares: no amount of reading books or checking off to-do lists can really make you feel "ready" to hold a new life in your arms and be told that it is yours, now, to look after forever.

Of course, that doesn’t stop us from trying. So much of parenting is out of our control, but most mothers - at least those without prior experiences with prematurity - take a 40-week pregnancy as a given. From that first pregnancy test, nine months seems long, but it’s incredible how quickly it fills with plans: for scans and milestones, baby showers and baby moons, nursery decorating and meal-prepping. 40 weeks is an eternity. 40 weeks is a countdown. 40 weeks is a watermelon (if you’ve downloaded a fruit size comparison app, and we all know you have). 

40 weeks is a goal, a deadline, a due date.

And in Australia, 1 in every 10 babies doesn’t make it that far.

Image: Supplied.

Ask any mother of a premmie, and she will tell you that if you think becoming a parent is shocking, imagine doing it without warning: learning, all of a sudden, that the pregnancy "journey" is over, and motherhood is starting right now, and there’s no more time to plan for anything at all. The word "unprepared" barely touches the sides.

The truth is, like motherhood itself, becoming a mum to a premature baby isn’t something you can prepare for. I wasn’t "ready" to be a mum until my son was born, with little notice and even less preparation, at 32 weeks and 1.6kg.

I wasn’t ready to stop being pregnant, or to stop working, or to let go of my expectations for an imagined future - far in the future - when my due date would come and my imagined full-term baby would burst, fully formed, into the world.

I wasn’t ready for how small he would be, how I could see through his skin, how utterly alien and unlike any other baby I’d ever seen he would seem. I wasn’t ready to learn the language of the NICU, to adopt a whole new lexicon, to be suddenly thrust into a whole world of heart-rate monitors and doctors' rounds.

I wasn’t ready to give birth to a baby who I couldn’t kiss or cuddle, who I couldn’t dress in the painstakingly chosen "hospital leaving outfit" I’d chosen in size 000, who couldn’t come home with me to his bedroom, which by the way, wasn’t ready either.

I wasn’t ready for the conversation I had with the neonatologist, who told me that babies my son’s age "mostly" have good outcomes. I wasn’t ready for the enormity of the prospect of what it would mean if he wasn’t one of the lucky ones. I wasn’t ready to face the other babies, some so much smaller than mine, some who arrived in the NICU before us and stayed long afterwards, whose parents were having very different conversations with the doctors. 

Image: Supplied.

I wasn’t ready for the worry, the heartache, to miss out on weeks of "baby bliss". I wasn’t ready to see friends who gave birth long after me take their full-term babies home before I got to do the same with mine. I wasn’t ready for the enormity of caring for my baby in the world when it was so clearly not the right place for him yet. 

The fact is that being a parent to a premature baby can be painful. It turns everything you expected from pregnancy, birth and the "fourth trimester" on its head. It forces you to grapple with bigger challenges in your first days as a mother than many parents deal with in their lifetimes.

But. 

Ask any mother of a premmie, and she’ll tell you that the pain is only one half of the equation. Because nothing can prepare you for the privilege of meeting your baby early. Of bearing witness to something most mothers only feel: the growth of a tiny, delicate being into something robust enough to make its own way in the world.

Ask any mother of a premmie, and she’ll tell you that no matter how hard it is to watch, it is also exceptional to witness. They say premature babies are fighters, but only those who’ve seen it really know what that means. To know a premmie baby is to be astonished by their survival instinct, their grit, their remarkable will to live against the odds. To love a premmie baby is to realise how little any of the things you planned for matter in comparison.

Ask any mother, and she’ll tell you she couldn’t love her baby any extra.

Image: Supplied.

Ask any mother of a premmie, and she’ll tell you that she does, for every extra day that baby has been in the world. 

Ask any mother, and she’ll tell you that you can never really be ready for a new baby. 

Ask any mother of a premmie, and she’ll tell you the same thing she tells her baby every day: 

It turns out; I was ready when you were.

Feature Image: Supplied.