In the Quiet: The Silent Struggles of Micro-Preemie Parents
Mateo’s NICU Journey Part 2
When Silence Feels Loud
When I imagined life in the NICU, I pictured noise—crying babies, frantic doctors, blaring alarms, and chaos. I thought suffering would look loud. But having a micro-preemie in the NICU taught me something different: the sickest babies aren’t loud; they’re quiet.
The silence hits you before anything else. It’s the first thing you notice walking into the NICU—rows of isolettes lined up under the soft hum of fluorescent lights, babies hidden away in their own small worlds. No cries, no chaos, just the whir of ventilators, with the beeping monitors that make your stomach drop when. you realize it’s from your baby.
Mateo was voiceless in those early weeks. His tiny body was barely larger than my hand, tucked behind layers of plastic and blankets. His eyes were fused shut, his face covered in medical tape, with tubes running down his nose and into his lungs. He didn’t cry. He couldn’t cry. Being hooked up to a ventilator meant his voice was silenced—muted by the machines keeping him alive.
The stillness in the NICU felt oppressive, like it had weight. It wasn’t peaceful; it was suffocating. The silence filled every inch of the room, leaving just enough space for fear to grow. Every beep of the monitor was a reminder that something could change in an instant. I was terrified to sit there, but I was even more terrified to leave and instead wonder what was happening in my absence.
For parents of micro-preemies, the silence isn’t comforting. It’s not a reprieve. It’s a void, a reminder of all the things your child isn’t doing— things you don’t realize you take for granted until they’re missing. No cries. No coos. No holding. No feeding. In those early days, I didn’t feel like a parent at all.
“It feels more like monitoring a fragile experiment than parenting.”
This is part 2 of a series I’m writing about our experiences with having a micro-premie. If this resonates with you, I’d love for you to subscribe and follow along. Your thoughts and stories are welcome—let’s share hope together.
Two Missions: Mateo and My Wife
The morning after Mateo’s emergency birth, I drove an hour to the hospital with a dual mission: to check on Mateo and to see my wife, who was still in the ICU. After her emergency c-section, her blood pressure remained dangerously high, and she was at risk for a stroke.
The night before, I had stayed with her at the first hospital, catching a few restless hours of sleep by her side before the NICU called her with updates on Mateo. She was still disoriented from the trauma and medication. “They said something about him being stable,” she told me, her voice strained. “But they’re running a lot of tests.” I could see the weight of it all pressing down on her, but she was too weak to process it fully.
The emergency OBGYN came in shortly after, looking just as stressed as she had the night before. “What did the NICU say? Is he okay?” she asked urgently. My wife did her best to relay the updates, but I was frustrated that she, in her fragile state, had to shoulder the responsibility of answering questions about Mateo.
I promised my wife I’d see her at the new hospital once she was transferred and headed home for a few hours of rest. Exhaustion caught up with me, and I fell asleep almost immediately. When I woke up, guilt set in. Mateo was alone in the NICU, and I hadn’t been there yet. I called friends and family, trying to sound optimistic: “Everyone’s doing okay, and we don’t need anything.” But inside, I felt like I was drowning.
On the drive to the hospital, the first wave of emotions hit me. For the first time, I cried. I let it out for ten minutes before pulling myself together. By the time I arrived, I felt like I was stepping into a new world—a world I would inhabit for the next six months.
A World Behind Locked Doors
When I finally made it to the hospital, I first checked in on my wife. She had just returned from a brain scan, and for the first time in days, she seemed calm, though a little detached. Her nurse was incredibly kind, encouraging me to visit the NICU. “Have you gone up to see him yet?” she asked gently.
“No, not yet,” I replied. The truth was, I was terrified. I didn’t know what I was about to walk into. I didn’t want to go up to the NICU, but I knew I needed to. So I went to visit Mateo for the first time, alone.
The NICU felt like an entirely different world. At the hospital we were in, the NICU took up an entire floor and could house nearly 100 babies at a time. Once I got off the elevator, I noticed the hopeful decorations—pictures of babies who had “graduated” from the NICU, with details of their birth weights and how many days they had spent there. But on this first visit, I barely registered these things. I was trying to figure out this new world of the NICU.
I was told it would be easiest if I called into the NICU the first time. Calling into the NICU, I identified myself, and a staff member came out to walk me through the protocol: put away your personal items, sanitize your hands, put your phone in the cleaning machine, wear a vest, mask up. These were rituals I would repeat daily for the next 6 months, but that first time, everything felt foreign.
Meeting Mateo
Once the locked doors opened to the NICU, I walked into a maze of different rooms. "Mateo is all the way at the end, by the window," the receptionist told me. Walking past rows of isolettes - temperature-controlled chambers spaced about every five feet - I felt the weight of each step. When I reached his station, I saw a small sign with his name on it.
Carol1, the first nurse I met, greeted me warmly. She had an empathetic smile, one that carried decades of experience and unshakable kindness. She was one of the most experienced nurses there, having cared for hundreds of babies over decades. Yet she looked at Mateo and me like we were her first NICU family, with a warmth that felt completely genuine.
"He's a miracle," she said, gesturing toward the isolette. Seeing Mateo up close was jarring. His movements were sudden and jerky, as if every neuron in his fragile body was firing at once, his brain testing connections that weren't quite ready. His skin was red and jaundiced beneath the tangle of tubes and wires. I couldn't bring myself to take pictures. This didn't look like the baby I had imagined.
Carol patiently guided me through what would become our new language: the maze of monitors and machines. She showed me how to read his blood oxygen levels (aiming for above 90%), and how the CO2 numbers revealed his tiny lungs' struggle to exchange gases. "Medical technology has come so far," she noted. "When I first started, we had nothing like this. Now we can track their nutrition through a phone app."
"We try to give him just enough oxygen without overloading his system," she explained - a balance we'd struggle with for months to come. I didn't understand then that the strange mechanical whoosh of his ventilator meant he needed more support than most NICU babies.
Then came a moment I'll never forget. Carol paused, her eyes welling with tears, and pointed toward the window. "You see that baseball stadium out there? One day, he's going to be playing there. I have no doubt."
In that moment, her words were a lifeline. Even after caring for thousands of babies, she hadn't lost her raw empathy, her ability to see past the medical equipment to the future each child might have. Though I was still terrified to look too long at Mateo, I felt, for the first time since his birth, a small sense of hope. He was in good hands.
Life Behind the Blanket
That first visit set the pattern for how we'd interact with our son in the weeks to come. Mateo's world became defined by his isolette - a small, enclosed space covered by a blanket. The blanket wasn't just for privacy—it was part of his care. The darkness helped stabilize him, mimicking the womb he was supposed to still be in. I quickly learned that every detail in the NICU was designed to replicate the environment of the womb. The lights were dim, the air was warm, and the sounds were hushed. For a baby born at just 24 weeks, even the slightest disruption—light, sound, or movement—could send their fragile system into chaos.
We couldn’t hold him. Touching him wasn’t even encouraged. Mateo was on IVH protocol, a precaution against intraventricular hemorrhage, or brain bleeds. His brain was so delicate that even small movements could cause catastrophic damage. So, we kept our distance, peering at him through the plastic walls of the isolette, watching the monitors for any sign of progress or decline.
It felt alien—this form of parenting that involved more observation than interaction. We were encouraged to not lift the blanket unless a nurse was present, and even then, only for brief moments. I would catch glimpses of him under the blue lights used to treat his jaundice, his tiny body covered in tubes and wires, his eyes shielded by protective goggles. I called them his “VR goggles” to make it feel less clinical, but it didn’t help much. He didn’t look like the baby I had imagined. He didn’t even feel like my baby.
Living by the Alarms
While the blanket created a protective barrier between Mateo and the world, the monitors became our window into his fragile existence. They were the first thing I looked at when I sat by his isolette, and they dictated every moment of our day. Mateo couldn't tell us how he was feeling, couldn't cry out when he needed help. Instead, the monitors spoke for him, tracking his oxygen levels, heart rate, and CO2 levels.
I quickly learned to decode the language of the alarms. Desats, or oxygen desaturation events, were common and terrifying. If Mateo’s oxygen levels dropped below 85%, the monitor lights would flash yellow, accompanied by a steady beep. Below 80%, the lights turned red, and the alarms became loud and urgent. Nurses would rush over to adjust the ventilator, increase his oxygen, or, in the worst cases, manually bag him to help him breathe.
It was a rollercoaster, one that left my stomach in knots. I would sit there, watching the monitor like a hawk, praying for fewer alarms. Every beep felt like a punch to the gut, a visceral reminder of how fragile he was. When the alarms stopped, I should have felt relief, but instead, I felt the weight of waiting for the next one.
The oscillator ventilator added another layer of tension. Its loud, mechanical whoosh filled the room, a constant presence that made it impossible to forget why Mateo needed it. The oscillator worked differently from a traditional ventilator, keeping his tiny lungs open with rapid, shallow breaths. Watching his chest vibrate with every pulse was surreal. It didn’t look like normal breathing—it looked unnatural, almost robotic.
In those early days, I didn’t understand how sick Mateo really was. The nurses didn’t say much about the oscillator at first, probably to avoid overwhelming us. But over time, I learned that being on the oscillator was a sign of how weak his lungs were. Babies who couldn’t manage on conventional ventilators were switched to the oscillator as a last resort. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t know that then. It would have made those moments even harder to bear.
“Every beep and alarm was a reminder of how fragile he was—and how little control we had.”
Even at home, the alarms haunted us. The sounds stayed with me, echoing in my mind long after I left the hospital. Every phone call from the NICU was a gamble. I dreaded hearing, “We had to intervene,” or, “It was a rough night.” Mateo’s condition could change in an instant. One moment he seemed stable; the next, he was in crisis. I saw it happen to other babies—one day off the ventilator, the next needing emergency resuscitation. The unpredictability was crushing.
Living by the alarms meant living in constant fear. Every beep, every light, every number on the screen felt like a verdict. It wasn’t just about surviving the moment—it was about surviving the next one, and the one after that. The alarms were our soundtrack, a relentless reminder of how precarious life in the NICU could be.
Parenting on a Different Planet
Looking around the NICU, I felt like an outsider. I would see parents holding their babies, feeding them bottles, or consoling them when they cried. These were the kinds of moments I had imagined when I thought about becoming a father—moments of connection, closeness, and comfort. But for us, it was nothing like that.
With a micro-preemie, parenting looked completely different. We weren’t just in a different situation; it felt like we were on a different planet. We couldn’t pick him up, couldn’t rock him to sleep, couldn’t even lift the blanket unless it was absolutely necessary. Our interactions with him were limited to the occasional hand on his tiny body, carefully timed with the nurses’ permission. Even that touch felt like a risk.
Instead of hearing Mateo’s cry, we watched numbers on a monitor. Instead of cradling him, we listened to the hum of machines. Instead of feeling like parents, we felt like observers—like spectators watching a delicate, fragile experiment unfold.
I’ll never forget how alienating it felt to talk to others outside the NICU. People who had spent time in the NICU with less critical babies would often say, “I know exactly what you’re going through,” or, “We had the same experience.” I know they meant well, but those words stung. The truth was, they didn’t understand.
Those first weeks were absolute hell—an indescribable kind of hell. From the outside, it might have looked calm: no screaming, no chaos, just quiet. But for us, it was suffocating. Mateo lay hidden behind layers of plastic and blankets, while the monitors told the real story.
To an outsider, it may have looked like stillness, like a baby peacefully resting. But for us, it was holding our breath, praying for the next moment to pass without disaster. Quiet didn’t mean peace—it meant a constant, suffocating fear that everything could change in an instant.
Mateo was fighting a silent battle, and all we could do was sit there and watch.
I changed names of characters to preserve anonymity