My name is Jessica Purba, and I had my baby on 18th December 2023. He was born at 33 weeks and 4 days of gestation at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield. His name is Obie Ajay, Obie meaning heart and Ajay meaning invincible!
Obie stayed in the NICU for exactly two weeks, being discharged on New Year’s Day 2024. He had CPAP, hi-flow, suspected sepsis and was tube fed during his stay.
Obie was and is the greatest Christmas present we have and will ever receive! We spent the Christmas and New Year’s Eve of 2023 in the NICU, being discharged on New Year’s Day to begin our lives at home together. Being discharged on that day really kicked off the new year for us! A new year, a new start - it felt really special.
However, before that, we watched as those lucky families ran for the door with their preemies and their Christmas Eve discharge. This wasn’t our time. We knew we’d spend Christmas at the hospital, Obie was still in the High Dependency Unit (HDU) and was only one week old. Nothing can prepare you for spending your baby’s first Christmas in the NICU, eating your microwave-heated Christmas dinner in the family room and saying goodbye on Christmas night, but also you will never feel kindness, love and hope like you do from those incredible nurses.
They brought in the tiniest Santa hats, left a bag of presents by his incubator on Christmas morning, which reduced me to tears. They made cards for Mummy and Daddy with baby’s photos, and personalised “My First Christmas” baubles. All of that meant so much. When you can’t do any of those things for your baby, and others go out of their way to make it special for you, it humbles you.
I remember being told on Christmas Eve that they were allowing aunts and uncles to visit for one day only on Christmas Day. I broke down. Completely overjoyed that finally his aunts and uncles would be able to come see him for the first time. Before that, it was just parents and grandparents who could come to the ward. They could only visit for an hour at a time, they had to book a time slot, and it was two people to an incubator, but I will never forget introducing my brother to his nephew on Christmas Day, his face at seeing how tiny Obie was, the love in his eyes, the pride when he got to hold him. They brought gifts, they were excited, and it was special, despite it not being what you imagined their first meeting would be.
We spent the whole day at the hospital. We had our Christmas nap in the chairs by the incubator and read Obie a Christmas story before finally leaving him that night to go home. I cried every night as we left him, but that day really cut me deep. No one should have to leave their baby in the hospital alone, especially at Christmas!
The days between Christmas and New Year passed, and with each day, Obie became stronger. He put on more weight, he pulled out his own feeding tube, and he came out of the incubator. It was looking like we might make it home for New Year’s Eve! The nurses all pushed for it, but the doctor on the ward round that day wanted us to do a night together in the “flats” before discharge. We agreed. We rushed home to pack our things for a sleepover in the hospital, our first night together as a family. Again, not how you imagine your first night together will be.
There were only two flats; they looked like a 1-star hotel room, mismatched furniture, out-of-date furnishings, but we couldn’t wait to have our boy with us through the night. We watched the fireworks at midnight on the TV and welcomed in the year together.
The ward round came the next morning, and it was our time; we were being discharged! I remember feeling excited to go home but also scared. All this time, we had had help; now we were on our own. I remember feeling like we could be “real” parents now. We no longer had to ask for permission to do everything.
At the time, we were in such awe and love with him that we didn’t really process the impact of the NICU, or the impact of being in the hospital over such a special time of year on us as parents; we were just so grateful for him to be alive. However, I now find myself overcompensating for his first Christmas experience. I want it to be a magical time for him, so I go above and beyond and sometimes completely over the top.
The reality is, I’m trying to cover up the guilt I feel for having to leave my baby over Christmas in the hospital. Mask the feeling of him having no Christmas presents from us for his first Christmas, no “my first Christmas” outfits, no magical photos by the tree at home. Instead, he wore a Santa hat knitted by someone who had donated it to the hospital. He had presents gifted by the NICU nurses, and the tree was located in the corridor to reduce the risk of infection. I am a huge lover of Christmas, but I feel we really missed out that year, despite everyone’s best efforts. Christmas will never go by without us remembering our time in the NICU.
We went back last year to visit the nurses and take gifts; it’s going to be our tradition every year. I am incredibly grateful for how special people made Obie's first Christmas, but I will always grieve that it wasn't the way we would have liked it to be.
