My nephew, Liam, is in the Neona­tal Inten­sive Care unit (NICU). He was born pre­ma­turely at 31 weeks on May 19^th and has been in the NICU since. It was known that Liam would have some con­gen­i­tal anom­alies by the time my sister-​​in-​​law was at her 18^th to 20^th week of her preg­nancy; they sus­pected an omphalo­cele and a cleft lip/​palate dur­ing an ultra­sound. What they didn’t expect was that he would be born so early and that he would still be in the NICU today.

The good news is that rather than hav­ing a cleft palate, he only has a cleft lip which will be cor­rected once he is med­ically sta­ble. He also had a sur­gi­cal repair of the omphalo­cele within five days of his birth.

The bad news is that after 2 and a half months, Liam is still hav­ing dif­fi­culty breath­ing on his own. They have tried to wean him off the ven­ti­la­tor at dif­fer­ent times, but ulti­mately he has had to go back on. They just recently did some test­ing (bron­cho­scope and esopha­gram) which has come back incon­clu­sive and they are cur­rently try­ing to keep him off the vent as I type. The entire fam­ily has got Liam in our prayers and we pray that Liam, the lit­tle fighter that he is, stays strong.

I can’t deny that I have very mixed feel­ings about Liam. Not about who he is, because I do love him with all my heart and soul. Nor about his con­di­tion, which I know is very hard both phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally for all involved.

No, my mixed feel­ings have to do with my strug­gle with infer­til­ity. Because it has been over 10 years since my hus­band and I have been try­ing to start our own fam­ily, my sister-in-law’s preg­nancy and Liam’s sub­se­quent birth has brought out what I think is the worse in me.

His birth was such a con­trast to his older brother, Tyler’s birth. Tyler is now 11 years old and when he was just an infant, I was just begin­ning my role as a new wife. Chil­dren were always on our mind, and we knew that we wanted to start our fam­ily within a year of our wed­ding. So I have such fond mem­o­ries of Tyler as an infant, spend­ing as much time as I could with him.

And now with Liam, it’s much more dif­fi­cult to spend the same amount of time with him that I did with his brother. First of all, he is still in the NICU which makes hold­ing and play­ing with him very dif­fi­culty. And sec­ond, emo­tion­ally it’s just very hard for me to con­nect with him or with his par­ents for that matter.

You would think that me being a reg­is­tered nurse, I should have the capac­ity to take care of both Liam and his par­ents’ needs as well as help them nav­i­gate through such a dif­fi­cult time despite my own per­sonal strug­gles. And I can tell you hon­estly; I have always tried to put my feel­ings and strug­gles behind those that I felt needed it more than I did. Except now, I’m in des­per­ate need of some of that com­pas­sion that I feel I have given to oth­ers for myself.

Before receiv­ing the news of my sister-in-law’s preg­nancy, I thought I had dealt rather decently with my infer­til­ity. Sure, it still stung a bit when I received word of other friends and extended fam­ily mem­bers who were preg­nant, but over­all I was pretty happy for them. Upon hear­ing this news, how­ever, I was absolutely dev­as­tated. Here I spent the past ten years try­ing to get preg­nant and have endured dis­ap­point­ment after dis­ap­point­ment and my sister-​​in-​​law, who just recently remar­ried 5 months prior to the big announce­ment, is preg­nant with her sec­ond child.

I can’t say that jeal­ousy had absolutely noth­ing to do with my major melt­down after hear­ing of the news, but it cer­tainly wasn’t the pri­mary rea­son for it. The word “fail­ure” comes to mind, along with the words “inad­e­quate” and “unwor­thy.” Those are the words that I thought of when I thought about myself. And they still do ring true even now two and a half months after Liam’s birth.

I have hon­estly wanted to spend more time with Liam and “bond” with him the way I did with his brother, to be there for him when he needs the most strength. But some­thing just keeps me from mak­ing that next step. It’s my innate fear that I’m going to release some of this anger over my own issues onto this child … or that my stinky atti­tude is just going to cause more harm than good to his par­ents and any other fam­ily mem­bers. And quite hon­estly, I don’t think I have enough strength right now to put one foot in front of the other and be strong for myself, let alone for any­one else.

How bad of an Aunt am I that I feel these things about a child; a help­less baby? How hor­ri­ble am I that I can’t set aside my own strug­gles to help out another fam­ily mem­ber in need? How unde­serv­ing am I to be a par­ent if I feel these things for some­one else’s child?

Log­i­cally, I know I have a right to feel the things I do. I’ve learned that I haven’t dealt fully with my failed IVF attempt and that I obvi­ously have very low self-​​esteem issues. What I don’t know now is how to snap out of this… to gather that strength that I’m sorely miss­ing and make that first step towards heal­ing myself.

To see pic­tures of Liam and fam­ily, click on the album below:

Liam

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