By Kati Tikkanen, as told to Olivia DeLong

I first found out I was pregnant sitting at a bar watching the World Cup with my husband — I got a whiff of beer and it just smelled funky. We stopped by CVS on our way home and grabbed a pregnancy test. I took it once we were home and sure enough, I was pregnant. 

During my pregnancy we took birth classes, read all the parenting books and created a birth plan. I went into labor knowing that I couldn’t control exactly how it would go, but wanted to try to control what I could. In the midst of all the prepping, around 33 weeks and about nine days after my baby shower, I unexpectedly went into labor. 

We weren’t prepared to have a preemie 

At the hospital my contractions were coming on strong and my body was progressing fast. Our baby was breech so it was going to be a C-section. Once my husband was scrubbed up, it was only about five minutes of surgery and Lucy was out. They let us take one picture with her, but she was very preemie and was having a hard time breathing. She had to go to the NICU. 

Holding her felt really, really rushed. They put her face next to my face and they let us take a selfie and then they ran her over to another area and put an oxygen mask on her. Then they wheeled her away. I was alone because they escorted my husband out and said he needed to follow Lucy to the NICU.

Sitting there alone waiting to be sewn up was a very weird experience. Everyone wanted to talk about my baby, but they also realized they couldn't answer specific things about how she was doing. I kept holding onto the fact that it was me by myself in this room, knowing that there were all these other unknowns happening on a different floor — I didn't even know what floor she was on and I didn't know where my husband was. Was he with her? 

A lot of hours went by and I didn't get to see Lucy until they could put me in a wheelchair. I had to get my catheter out first and I needed to be able to move my legs. I remember really focusing hard on getting my toes and my foot to move so I could get in that wheelchair and go up to her floor. 

The NICU staff took great care of all of us 

Once I got to the NICU floor, I was so thankful. The NICU nurses were truly incredible. The NICU nurse who was there at the check-in station said, "just so you know, your daughter is doing good. She's really strong and she is really fighting.” And I didn't know the context of that because I had never been in the NICU before. Of course, my immediate reaction was, "Of course, she's the best — my baby is fine, she is healthy and of course, a fighter." But the fact of the matter was, she was born very early and her lungs hadn't had a chance to develop properly. She was 4 pounds, 15 ounces and looked like a Christmas ham.

Once we walked down the hall, I realized that in the grand scheme of things, she was fine because I started to realize the severity of the NICU. Lucy was in the last room at the end of the hall and I just remember trying to prepare myself. I took a deep breath and thought about what I might walk into and what I was going to see. How many tubes, how many things will be on my baby? Even so, I don't think I was prepared to see her with so many wires, so much gauze on her head. She had a heart monitor on and a feeding tube in — there was just a lot of stuff on and around her. It was really scary. 

We soaked in every moment of learning 

Once the initial shock of the NICU subsided a bit, we went into learning mode. The NICU nurses are also like educators, and it feels like they know that all you are going to want is answers. They also know that they can't always give you solid answers. However, they are so good about getting you up to speed on the medical stuff they can answer and helping you feel confident about what's going on.

The next several days were really just about learning — learning what the numbers on the machine meant and what it would take for her monitor to come off, the feeding tube to be removed and when she could have the bilirubin lights (for jaundice) turned off. We did a lot of reading and hoped that our kid would reach those milestones early so that she would come home.

The nurses were so clear from the beginning: they told me that a lot of premature babies do not go home before their due date and I just remember thinking I couldn't imagine going home without my baby for six weeks. She did get to go home before that (after 28 days), but it didn't sink in for me or my husband that that was actually a possibility until we were on week three or so and we just kept thinking, “Maybe today is the day.”

Then it became a waiting game 

Once she was eating on her own, no longer needing the bilirubin lights, IVs or breathing assistance, it became a waiting game for her to be released. She needed to go five days without having any bradycardia, aka "Bradys,” or a drop in heart rate, or any desats, a drop in her oxygen levels. We were just waiting for her to have a five-day stretch of not having either episode.

We would go four days without desats and then all of a sudden we would get a call from the night nurse or I would walk in and see that she was having one. There were just a lot of false starts in there: she even had her car seat test twice (another piece of the NICU release checklist) because we thought we were taking her home. And then she would have a brady the next day and we had to start the clock over from the beginning. It was really hard. 

One time, we were told she made it, she did it and was coming home, so we got balloons, my mom was there to help us, we parked the car and we got upstairs to the NICU and the nurse was crying. She said she had had a desat just a few minutes before, right when we were parking the car. We had to start our clock over. 

But on the 28th NICU day, we were told she was officially coming home. I remember wanting to rush through it because I was afraid the doctors were going to change their minds. That was the moment I thought, oh, I really have a baby now. It was the best feeling. We couldn't control anything up until that moment and now all of the sudden we could make our own choices. We could make our life plan instead of our birth plan. 

Although it wasn't part of our plan, we are grateful for the experience 

I didn't think I was going to take half of my maternity leave from the second floor of the hospital. The hospital is about an hour away from us in New York, and it was just a really long period of time to not have my baby at home with us. 

But as trying as being in the NICU is, there were so many cool things too that I would have never got to experience. There were youth coordinators at the hospital for instance, who would come to the NICU and do things for the babies. They would dress up the cribs and isolettes for the holidays. For Valentine's Day, they made Lucy a special bow and blanket. And I thought if I was going to spend every single holiday there, I was going to dress her up for every single one — so I did. 

They also had a guitarist who would come around to all of the kids and just serenade them. There was one instance where they came over while I was holding Lucy and played a song for us. We got to slow dance and it was just really, really great. We would have little photoshoots where the nurses would strategically place her cords and her wires a certain way or help me get angles so that you couldn't see the glares. It was fun to get to know these women and to try to find fun ways to spend the time together. 

I also became really good friends with a couple of the moms and other staff members that I will just never forget. I met wonderful women who had very different stories, yet were going through very, very similar experiences. Even though everybody's road was different, it was very unifying and healing to talk to one another.

When your baby is in the NICU, your recovery is so much different 

It's interesting when I think about my recovery as a pregnant person versus Lucy in the hospital because my mind immediately switched to her health and well-being rather than mine. 

Even so, there is a silver lining in being in a NICU, and that is sleep. I could sleep and that was a huge help. I got to sleep through the night after having major abdominal surgery, and I feel like you really need that during recovery. I was fortunate that I got to heal in a parallel path with Lucy — she was healing in her room in the hospital and I was able to heal when visiting hours were over and I went home to rest. 

By the time she came home, I was on the mend. I was really getting back to some resemblance of what life was like before, I was able to walk on my own and was really able to care for her. When I look back, my birth experience was nothing like I had planned, but what came out of it was great.