there was a little girl and a little boy

It took two hours for the doctors to come see us. The Benadryl they gave me for the itching made me sleepy and mellow. I didn't feel like a mom. Was I afraid? I can't really remember. I was in a state of waiting and the drugs and numbness definitely helped with that. When the doctor finally came it was a woman we hadn't met yet: another perinatologist. She started updating us, saying your daughter this, and your daughter that. . .she asked us if they had names and then switched to Lily is doing this and Lily is doing that.

That's when I got really scared. What is happening with my son? Why are you not telling us anything about Cyrus?

Things were not looking good for Cyrus. He was very sick--the sickest baby they had. His lungs had been full of blood when he was born and he wasn't breathing. He hadn't taken any breaths on his own before they intubated him and hooked him up to the ventilator. He was on lots of medication to keep his blood pressure up--without it his pressure had been very, very low. Very low. He might have had a seizure but they weren't sure. They weren't sure what was going to happen with him. We couldn't see him yet.

She told me that he was probably the reason I'd gone into labor. That if he had been born any later he would most likely have been stillborn. Somehow the mother's body knows what the baby needs and what that baby needed was to come out.

I'm not sure how long after that I saw them. Did my husband see them first? I can't remember. I know we had to wait until I could feel my legs and, even then, I was pushed in a wheel chair. Pushed through a set of automated double-doors and into the NICU for the first time. Our babies were on the right side of the room, towards the front. There were one or two babies we passed to get to them. Cribs and incubators lined the large rectangular room. There were sinks, monitors, nurses, rolling chairs, nursing screens, blankets, hospital gowns, shelves, lights, soap, diapers, wipes, thermometers, drawers, doctors, posters. Was it quiet or loud? I don't remember. Someone wheeled me up to the two incubators and there I met our babies. I did not recognize them at all. I did not feel a swell of love at the sight of them. I stared hard--at Lily's long, skinny body. Her teeny, tiny fingers. Her tiny chest. Her little head covered in minky hair. Her tiny diaper. At Cyrus.

I actually don't know if what I remember is seeing him for the first time or what I'm remembering is the next few days. He had a tube down his throat and a little mask holding it into place. He had his head wrapped up to cover the wires monitoring his brain activity. They had the oscillator going--can't remember what that was for. The nurses told us how swollen he was but we didn't see that--we didn't know what he was supposed to look like.

I went to him and, when I was allowed to, I cupped his feet with one hand and held my other hand above his head, not touching him where the wires were. He had an IV in his bellybutton. He was so beautiful and so still. NICU babies are so sensitive that they are not to be stroked--if you touch them it is better to not move your hands because the touch overstimulates their skin and they need all their energy to grow and heal. I didn't rub or stroke them but I would sometimes hold one hand lightly on his chest and belly. One hand practically covered him there. I felt him in there and I would sing or stand quietly, touching him and pouring hope and love into him.

One morning I walked to the NICU alone--my husband was still sleeping. It must have been the day after they were born. It was really early in the morning. I was up, pumping the tiny bit of colostrum my breasts were producing and using a syringe to pull out every precious drop from the pump parts. At some point we counted the steps from my room to the NICU but I can't remember the number. One hundred and fifty maybe? You walked through the quiet halls, quiet except for the healthy cries of the full-term babies sleeping in their bassinets in their mothers' rooms. You got to the double doors and picked up a phone hanging on the wall. That buzzed the clerk inside who then let you into the hallway. From there you passed through another door into the NICU itself. That morning I got buzzed in and they saw it was me right about the time I saw that Cyrus' bed was surrounded by doctors and nurses. "You can't come in right now!" someone told me. I stood there, looking in the window at all those professionals hustling over my boy and I started to weep. Someone eventually came and stood next to me, not saying anything. No one looked at me or talked to me. It was so scary and so lonely. And I knew I was not going anywhere because if my son was going to die I was going to stand there and be there when it happened.

He didn't die.

He was so very sick. I found that I could hardly look at Lily. Luckily my husband would go straight to her and talk to her, change her, hold her feet in his hands. I was afraid that Cyrus would die and that I would not know how to mother her in the wake of losing her brother.