My daughters, at their last weigh day, are now 6 weeks old and weigh 912g (2lb) and 1,101g (2lb 7oz) respectively from their birth weights. After 6 weeks, it seems strange but they don’t look small anymore; Instead I think my perception has changed and now full term babies appear as giants even if they were only 7lbs at birth.
I’m not intending to write a diary of either mine or my daughters’ experiences but after 6 weeks of my daughters being in intensive care I feel I’ve endured more emotional and mental stress than I care to admit and I suspect that I am not alone in this. One thing I have noticed though, is that whilst all the doctors and nurses I’ve met and got to know ask how I am doing, they are actually very limited in what they can offer me as a dad. The majority of the support mechanisms are aimed towards mothers. This is not a bad thing, and I can speak from this experience and say that I am grateful for everything that has been done to help and support my wife. But perhaps this can help the dads out there that don’t know where or who to turn to.
In the last six weeks, I have felt a variety of things to varying levels in strange combinations:
- Helpless
- Guilty
- Sad
- Angry
- Isolated
- Scared Petrified
- Jealous
I struggled to put my finger on what I was feeling at the time but found myself closing up and not necessarily wanting to deal with the situation I was in. I don’t know if that meant I was, or even am, depressed or that I was just trying to tell myself things will be better without me needing to be there.
I think the thing that hit me the hardest was underestimating the “honeymoon period” that all the doctors and nurses kept reminding me we were in during the first 2-3 weeks. The part that has been the hardest for me to deal with over the last 6 weeks is the constant uncertainty of never knowing what will happen next, what’s that alarm for and what I am going to come back in to after getting what sleep I can.
To an extent I regret the way I reacted and am now trying to spend as much time as I can with my daughters so that I can celebrate every little achievement of theirs. From seeing them open their eyes for the first time, to being fully fed and even having their longline or first cannula removed. These are all tiny little things, maybe even insignificant to a full term baby, but to my premature twin girls, a part of me dreaded each of these achievements being their last because I just didn’t know what was going to happen.
The First 6 Weeks 