Anyone who’s familiar with the Bristol skyline will know the St Michael’s hospital chimney. After reading this week’s piece from Dispatches from New Motherhood we can guarantee you won’t look at it in the same way again.
In the incredibly affecting 99 DAYS IN NICU, Mothership Writer Jo Milano reflects on the time her firstborn child spent in the Neonatal Intensive Care unit at St Michael’s. With controlled and highly visual prose, Jo conveys the pain of leaving her daughter every night, the milestones as time passes – and what the chimney comes to symbolise.
Of Mothership Writers, Jo says ‘the course gave me the space and time to be creative again. I found that my baby responded really well to the calm focused atmosphere in the room and played really happily. We both came away from the sessions feeling upbeat. It was such an inclusive and accepting environment. I am so grateful to have rediscovered my love of writing.’
And we’re very grateful that Jo was willing to share her story.
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99 Days in NICU
Jo Milano
The hospital incinerator chimney stands out from the city skyline. This is the story of how he became my Sentinel.
Outside it’s a bright blue morning in early autumn. I’m at work, in the loo, 26 weeks pregnant, and I'm bleeding and shaking. That evening I have an emergency caesarean. I'm numb, yet I can feel when my daughter pops out of my womb clean as an avocado stone.
She is hurried away in an incubator to NICU. I lie empty. I’m sewn back together and wheeled to a private room that looks out to the hospital incinerator chimney. It is now the darkest part of the night. Two small red lights shine out near the top of the chimney and we watch each other with our red eyes until dawn.
I walk to meet her for the first time once morning has broken and my legs are working. She is tiny and translucent. Covered in wires and monitors, and breathing with a tube down her throat. Naked except for a square of bubble wrap the size of a crisp packet for a blanket. My heart explodes.
The following night I shuffle back to her. Barefoot, in surgical stockings, blood stains on my t-shirt, colostomy bag hooked on my waistband. I want to be with her to celebrate her first 24 hours alive. I will take every anniversary I can.
The next day I’m discharged and I go home that night. Leaving her hurts like a deep horror. I walk out through the hospital doors into the night air. Looking up I see the chimney rising up into the stars. The Sentinel. His red eyes watch me go.
From the upstairs window at home I can see the Sentinel. He marks the centre of my new world. I curl up on my bed and howl. He stands vigil for me until dawn when I rush back to her.
I have become wild and alert and pace around her incubator growling at anyone who disturbs her. A leaflet for the hospital psychiatric services appears next to her charts.
At night I leave again and he watches over her.
A month later she reaches a kilo in weight and we bring chocolate cake into the hospital to celebrate.
He watches over her.
I express so much milk that we have to buy a new freezer to store it in.
He watches over her.
Winter storms blow through.
He watches over her.
She breathes by herself.
He watches over her.
One day, when the Christmas decorations are up, all of her monitors are disconnected and I can finally pick her up and turn in a circle without becoming tangled. Holding her to my chest and gently spinning, tears fall onto her soft bald head. We are no longer tethered to the hospital.
In the New Year I carry her out into the fresh air for the first time. The Sentinel stands there proud as a new parent and I thank him for a final time.
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99 Days in NICU by Jo Milano appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.