I'm a better parent because my baby was born premature

"My first act as a mother was to let my baby go."

In early 2022, I gave birth to my son, Max. He was 32 weeks gestation, weighed 1.6 kilos, and spent just over five weeks in the NICU. 

I’ve said a version of that summary so many times over the course of his life, and with each year that passes, it feels less relevant: at nearly three years old, he is a healthy, thriving, almost obscenely delightful toddler. 

But that doesn’t mean I don’t reflect on his early birth, or think about the ways it has influenced how I parent. The more distance I get from the actual event, the more I understand that my baby’s prematurity taught me some critical lessons which made me a better mum.  

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I embraced equal parenting

When my son was born, the first person to hold him was my husband. I was somewhere else in the hospital, being shown how to express colostrum, and then back in my room, waiting to meet him. 

It was a torturous wait, but I wasn’t worried: my baby wasn’t alone. He was with his dad. 

In the days that followed, my baby could only be fed through a tube. My husband and I took turns. My son did kangaroo care on both of our chests, and at that point, he didn’t have a preference: he just wanted to be near a warm, beating heart. 

As time went on, I started to breastfeed, and the exact split of our parenting shifted slightly. What remained was a mutual agreement that a dad could, and should, be expected to do just as much for his baby as a mum. 

I know everything is temporary

Babies move quickly, even when they are born early, even when they can’t actually move yet. The exquisite beauty of his tiny fingers wrapped in mine, the clenching terror each time his heart rate rose: it was magical, it was terrifying, and it was, ultimately, fleeting. 

As each new and frightening toddler developmental milestones hits us, I think of the speed at which those five weeks he spent in the NICU passed. This stage, whatever it is, will one day be a memory too. 

Image: Supplied

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I learned about letting go

For many women, their first act as a mother is to hold their baby close - to clutch them to their chest, to wonder at their wholeness, to stroke their downy head and sob. My first act as a mother was to let my baby go. 

As I’ve gone on to parent my son, and then his younger brother, I’ve realised how much of parenting is in the release: of your child, and of your centrality to their lives. It is natural to hold your child close to you. Closeness is the easy part.

It is the gradual letting go, letting them spin out of your reach until you are no longer at the centre of their orbit, which is the challenge.

When I let a doctor bundle my tiny newborn son up in a roll of plastic wrap and cart him off to the NICU, I thought that perhaps I hadn’t yet started parenting yet, but I was wrong. I was simply learning early what I would have, under other circumstances, learned a little later. 

I have waited alone in a hospital room wondering if my baby was alive only once, but in the years that have followed, I have experienced the sensation over and over again, in differing degrees. The hardest parts of parenting are not the moments where your child clings to you.

Only seconds into becoming a mother, I had done the hardest part already: I let him go. 

Image: Supplied

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I gained the ultimate perspective

If I had my choice, I would have gestated my son to full term. Nobody chooses to give birth at 32 weeks, and nobody can ever be fully prepared for the consequences. 

But when it happened, I felt like my husband and I had another choice: to mourn the full-term baby and birth we had wanted, or celebrate the one we had. We chose the latter. 

The first update I had on my baby, after he was rushed away to the NICU, wasn’t from a doctor or a midwife.

It was from my husband, running back into my hospital room, sweaty and breathless with adrenaline. The first thing he told me wasn’t whether our son needed a ventilator (he didn’t) or a CPAP (he did). It wasn’t how frighteningly small he was, how vulnerable.

It wasn’t APGAR scores or birth weight or the preliminary prognosis the doctor had given. I would find that all out for myself, eventually. 

“Oh Zo,” he said instead, “he is so perfect.” 

And he is. 

Originally published as I'm a better parent because my baby was born premature