The land of Not Normal

It's midnight, and I'm sitting across the counter from a fellow NICU mom, staying at the Ronald McDonald House along with me. She's eating a microwaved plate of leftovers: tortillas, veggies, chicken. I'm shoveling a bowl of frosted flakes in my mouth so fast, the milk is spilling ungraciously off my spoon and out of my mouth. I make a half hearted attempt to not eat like a pig, but it's late, really late, and I'm starving. When I left the hospital a few minutes ago, a little girl was sobbing, wailing like she was being tortured. I don't know why, but judging by the parents reactions, it was in anticipation of something terrible about to be done to her. A treatment of some sort, perhaps. Her crying haunts me, and I still hear it.

My fellow NICU mom before me is the closest thing I have to a girlfriend here, and I listen intently as she crams food into her mouth, like me, and tells me about how her relationship is falling apart. The stress of having a sick baby is wearing on her fiancée. I vaguely think about my own marriage, and how hard sick babies can be on one. At this point, seven years in, my marriage feels a bit like a cockroach. It somehow survives in extreme conditions: having a baby while still newlyweds, living paycheck to paycheck, having another baby, still living paycheck to paycheck, me coming down with a chronic pain condition and subsequently getting addicted to painkillers and going to rehab for 7 weeks, more debt and living paycheck to paycheck, finding out we're expecting twins and then almost losing  them a bunch of times, and an 11 week hospital stay, and more debt. More stress. More more more. 

I sit there and I pour another bowl of frosted flakes (because it always has to be two bowls. It can never be just one. NEVER.), and I listen to my fellow NICU mom. For a moment, it feels almost like life is normal, and I'm just listening to a friend talk about her life. But there is no normal here, not really. We're wading through the land of Not Normal, where you visit your infant and try not to bother it with your touch, because it's hooked up to tubes and wires, and you could accidentally yank one of them out. Day and night mean nothing, so when you're having a feeding frenzy in the kitchen at midnight, you're joined by other parents doing the same, with the same blank look on their faces, the same glazed-over eyes.

How are you doing?

My baby had surgery today. I hope she doesn't die.

There is no time here. There is no Friday nights, Monday mornings. There is only now. There is only the hospital. There is only your child, fighting for their life, and you, fighting along with them.