You are My Sunshine

Today’s post comes from Alaina, a preemie mom of two and an educator. We are so grateful to her for sharing her story.

As babies, my siblings and I were each assigned a different lullaby by our mother. She would sing our special song to lull us to sleep at night, and to wake us up in the morning. I still remember her coming into my room, singing my lullaby while lifting the blinds on my bedroom window, sunlight splashing in across the floor. For my sister, it was Winnie the Poo, for my brother, it was “My Boy Lollipop”, a modified version of the ‘50s doo-wop song, and for me it was “You are my sunshine”.

You are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy
When skies are grey

You’ll never know dear
How much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away.

While my siblings’ lullabies were lighthearted and playful, mine held a deeper, more serious significance. I was my mother’s rainbow baby. After having a miscarriage, my mother struggled with depression, and wanted desperately to have another child. At my own wedding, my father recalled this moment in our family history, and said that with my birth, joy returned to our household. The grey skies finally cleared.

When I became pregnant with my first child, I wanted to continue this family tradition. The choice to hand down my own lullaby was an obvious one. My mother and I even decided to use the song as a theme for my baby shower, decorating my parent’s living room with bright yellow decorations. A large wooden sign bearing the words to the song hung over the mantle, presiding over the festivities. But rainclouds were approaching, and amid the oohs and aahs as I unwrapped tiny baby sleepers, booties and blankets, I felt a gush. And then another. A flood of sweet smelling liquid too copious and odorless to be urine. I was rushed to the hospital, leaving my shower guests to discreetly let themselves out. My water had broken at 27 weeks, and I floated in a hospital bed for 5 days before labor started. Born at 28 weeks and 2 days, weighing 2 and a half pounds, my son shares his birthday with three other people spanning 5 generations in our family. My grandfather turned 80 the day he was born, making my son the last great grandchild he would meet and hold. But I remember July 9th for other reasons now, too, reasons that would once again transform our simple lullaby into something even more significant.

Early in the morning on the day I went into labor, I felt a strange patch on my neck. I waddled to the mirror and immediately recognized what I saw: shingles, a reincarnation of the chicken pox virus I don’t even remember having as a toddler. I had had shingles several years earlier, in the exact same spot, and recognized it immediately- the tiny bumps on a raised bed, the strange burn. I called for my nurse, who recoiled in fear as I uttered the word “shingles”. I know now that few things strike fear in the heart of a maternity ward nurse like the herpes zoster virus. Chicken pox can cause complications in pregnant women who have never been exposed to the virus and can be deadly in newborns, especially the premature. But the virus posed no risk to me, it could not cross the placenta, and my baby was likely getting plenty of antibodies to protect him after he was born. But I was now contagious… and in preterm labor. Several NICU nurses appeared in my labor and delivery room and, between contractions, told me I would not be able to touch or see or visit my baby in the NICU. After he was born, my little sunshine would be taken away.

During the next week or so, I was given conflicting advice about when I would be allowed to enter the NICU, maybe days, maybe weeks, and during that time, I feared I would never get to see him alive. The hospital was anxious to discharge me and my virus, so I went home, empty handed, broken hearted, and unsure when I would be allowed to return. The staff tried to comfort me, assuring me that I could Facetime with my son, but this seemed like such a poor substitute for the actual contact my body craved that their well-intended advice felt more like salt than salve. But we did use FaceTime, because what other options did I have? My husband held the phone up to my son’s isolette, and I could make out nothing but blue phototherapy lights and the faint outline of a protective eye mask. My parents and my sister sat beside me on the living room couch, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of my neon blue neonate. “Sing him your song,” my mother coaxed. I felt a lump in my throat as I sang.

You are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy
When skies are grey
you’ll never know dear
how much I love you
Please don’t take my sunshine away.

My voice quivered as I sang the last line. My sister burst into tears.

Since my son was born, I have found myself mentally collecting stories of parents being separated from their children. A month after my son was finally discharged, I heard of a mother who was separated from her newborn for crossing into a state where she had an outstanding warrant, while attempting to get her very sick baby to a bigger and better hospital. An acquaintance had her children taken away after hospital staff suspected she was harming them. Sick parents were quarantined during the Ebola outbreak, away from their healthy children. A baby was literally torn from her mother’s arms by a tornado. And then there are all the children separated, perhaps permanently, from their parents at the US border or by deportation. What I find so troubling in these stories is that the connection that to me is as palpable as my own arms can be so easily severed by something bigger and more powerful than me: mother nature, a virus, the state or just bad luck. It makes me feel so small, so vulnerable, and so afraid.

My son is too big for bedtime lullabies now. At night he mostly wants me to tell him stories in which he is the fire-fighting superhero who overcomes obstacles and saves the day. It’s not a stretch for me to imagine this. Preemies are well suited for the role of superhero. While my son no longer asks for lullabies, my daughter is still an infant. She was born full term and knows nothing of heel pricks and PICC lines. She has never been soothed by a purple-gloved hand reeking of latex and antiseptic. She only knows my own soft touch, the scent of my milk. But still I sing the song to her anyway. It’s not a lullaby anymore. It’s more than that. It’s an incantation, a supplication, a prayer for both of my children, for us. My voice still quivers sometimes when I sing it.