Kneading
The first time two nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit place her weightless body on my chest so I can hold her skin to skin, she sticks to me like a hand kneading dough that begs for flour. I sit in a rocking chair but brace against movement, against breathing, although the nurses claim...
An Abecedarian Nocturne for the NICU Moms
An angel got its wings today, the caption reads beneath a photo of a mother’s baby the size of a hand posted to the Facebook NICU parents page. Night nurse clicks around vital sign jumbo screens. The whir of my breast pump punctuates each beat as I doom scroll through pictures and pleas –...
Childbirth in Alabama
Tomorrow my son turns ten. Double digits. Passes out of the smaller numbers forever. It makes me remember how small he was at the beginning, four pounds, four ounces. Not, I soon learned, a really small baby; large, in fact, next to his NICU classmates, one of the lucky big premature babies moved, after the...
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