投稿者: itochan_story

Ito-chan Is Ito-chan

🌏Read in Japanese

Once we were home, life became busy in a completely different way from when Ito-chan had been in the hospital, but whenever my husband was home, he helped with her baths and milk, and little by little, the two of us began settling into this new life of raising our daughter together.

Nighttime, however, was a slightly different story.

Even when Ito-chan cried in the middle of the night, my husband somehow managed to sleep straight through it.

Sometimes I genuinely wondered how he could possibly stay asleep with a baby crying right beside him, and looking back now, it makes me laugh, but thankfully, Ito-chan hardly ever cried through the night, which made those early months much easier than they might otherwise have been.

In many ways, my husband did not change very much after she was born.

Even during pregnancy, while I worried about things that had not happened yet and imagined every possible version of the future, he had always been the kind of person who dealt with whatever was happening right in front of him.

There had been times during pregnancy when I looked at him and wondered,

How can you be so calm?

Sometimes his calmness made me feel as though I was the only one who was afraid, and there were moments when the difference between us felt lonely.

But even after our daughter was born and the things we had once only imagined began becoming real, he remained much the same.

If her breathing worried us, he thought about what needed to be done then.

If she threw up her milk, he checked how she was doing.

If we needed to go to the hospital, we went.

Instead of trying to solve problems that had not happened yet, he seemed to wait until something was actually in front of us and then deal with that one thing.

That was how he faced life with our daughter.

I could not do that so easily.

Even after we brought her home, even after we finally began spending every day together, the question

What is going to happen to Ito-chan?

never completely disappeared.

Whenever her breathing looked difficult, I became frightened, and because she spit up so often, there were many times when I wondered whether she was really okay.

Coming home from the hospital did not suddenly make me feel safe.

If anything, having her beside me all the time made me notice everything—every breath, every change in her expression, every time she threw up.

And throughout those days, there was another thought that returned to me more times than I would like to admit.

Why me?

Why us?

Why her?

They were questions I had asked myself many times during pregnancy, and even after my daughter was born, I could not simply let them go.

It was not because I did not love her.

If anything, perhaps I thought about those things precisely because I loved her so much.

What treatments would she need?

How would she grow?

Would she walk?

Would her eyes and ears be okay?

What would happen with her breathing?

The more I learned about her condition, the more possible futures appeared in my mind, and I frightened myself by trying to live through all of them before they had even happened.

There was something else I could not bring myself to do.

I had not told my friends about my daughter’s birth.

Normally, perhaps you send a photograph and say,

“She’s here.”

You tell everyone her name, and messages of congratulations begin to arrive.

But I could not do it.

I think I simply did not know how to explain what had happened.

I was happy that my daughter had been born.

I was deeply grateful that she had made it into this world.

But I did not know what words were supposed to come after that.

How much should I explain about her condition?

What would people think?

What would they say?

And if someone simply said, “Congratulations,” how would I feel?

While I kept thinking about all of those things, time passed, and I still said nothing.

Looking back now, I think that silence was simply the best I could do at the time.

I was not trying to hide my daughter.

I was still trying to understand everything myself.

At some point, my husband and I talked about how we wanted to move forward.

“Let’s grow together, all three of us.”

Not just our daughter.

Us too.

We could learn what we did not yet understand.

If something became difficult, we could face it when it came.

Of course, saying those words did not suddenly make me positive about everything, and there were still mornings when I woke up afraid of the future all over again.

But little by little, something inside me began to change.

Instead of thinking,

We have to somehow fix everything for her,

I began to think,

Maybe we can just keep moving forward with her.

My husband’s parents also helped me see things differently.

From the very beginning, they never looked at Ito-chan with despair.

They did not treat her as a poor little baby whose life had been ruined by a diagnosis, nor did they look at our family as though something terrible had happened to us.

They simply kept saying,

“Ito-chan is Ito-chan.”

Ito-chan was Ito-chan.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

She could have a diagnosis.

She could have a feeding tube.

Her feet could need treatment.

There could be surgeries somewhere in her future.

But before any of those things, she was Ito-chan.

Every time I heard those words, I realized how much time I had spent looking at my daughter’s future instead of looking at my daughter.

Because she was right there in front of me.

She was still too young to clearly show us what she wanted, but little by little, her face became more expressive.

The baby who had always stared so intently at people began to make little expressions that looked like smiles.

At the time, I did not even know whether she was really smiling at us.

But whenever I saw that face, there were moments when I could think,

Maybe you are already enough exactly as you are.

Her condition had not disappeared.

Neither had my fear.

We had not suddenly been given answers about her future.

And yet, for that brief moment, I could look at her and think,

You can just be you.

Those moments slowly became more frequent.

A new expression made me happy.

A face we had never seen before was enough for my husband and me to get excited.

Day by day, she seemed to show us a little more of herself, and watching those expressions appear became one of the things I loved most.

Of course, there were still plenty of things that frightened me.

Her breathing worried me, especially when it looked as though she was struggling, and because she spit up so often, I repeatedly found myself wondering,

Can a baby really throw up this much and still be okay?

Happiness and fear did not take turns.

They existed at the same time.

I could feel happy because she had smiled, while still watching her breathing closely.

I could celebrate a new expression and then worry again the moment she threw up her milk.

There were days when I thought,

She’s going to be okay,

and other days when I found myself wondering all over again what her future would look like.

Maybe accepting that your child has a medical condition does not mean reaching a point where all of the fear suddenly disappears.

At least, that was not what acceptance looked like for me.

There were days when I could look forward.

There were also days when I still thought, Why me?

There were moments when I looked at my daughter and felt that she was perfect exactly as she was, and there were nights when imagining her future frightened me.

Both versions of me were real.

And still, life kept moving.

Every three hours, it was time for milk.

We bathed her, cleaned her up when she threw up, watched her sleeping face, went to the hospital, and came home again.

My husband continued dealing with whatever was directly in front of us, I continued worrying a little too far into the future, and somewhere between the two of us, our daughter kept growing more expressive, as though she had no idea how much her parents were thinking about everything.

Perhaps all three of us were growing at different speeds.

Just as Ito-chan was slowly learning and growing in her little body, my husband and I were slowly learning how to be her parents.

If I could go back now and say just one thing to the person I was during those early months, I think I would tell her,

You’re going to be okay.

Not because nothing difficult is going to happen.

Not because there will come a day when there is nothing left to worry about.

Not because the hospital visits will disappear or every treatment will suddenly be over.

I would tell her,

You’re going to be okay, because she is growing. She is trying, and she is growing.

Back then, I kept searching for answers somewhere in a future that had not happened yet.

But perhaps what I really needed to see was not the future version of Ito-chan.

It was the little girl right in front of me, doing everything she could to live that particular day.

One new thing.

One new expression.

A face that looked slightly different from yesterday, staring back at us again today.

That was enough.

I did not need to accept everything all at once.

My fear did not need to disappear.

It was okay that there were days when I wondered, Why me?

Even while carrying those feelings, I was still holding my daughter.

My husband was still beside us.

And Ito-chan was still growing.

Ito-chan is Ito-chan.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

I think it was through those ordinary days that I slowly began to understand what those words really meant.

Ito-chan,

back then, I spent so much time worrying about your future.

But while I was looking so far ahead,

you were right there in front of me,

living today,

and growing just a little more than you had yesterday.

So if I could speak to myself back then, I would say it once more.

You’re going to be okay.

Because this little girl,

at her own pace,

is growing every single day.

Every Day With You

🇯🇵Read in Japanese

The moment I stepped through the hospital doors with my daughter in my arms and felt the outside air around us, it finally began to feel real that our life as a family of three was about to begin.

Of course, I was still afraid.

At the hospital, there had always been doctors and nurses nearby, and whenever there was something we did not understand, there was someone we could ask, but from now on, we would be the ones closest to our daughter—the ones giving her milk, changing her feeding tube, and noticing the smallest changes in her condition.

And yet, there was something that made me far happier than all of that made me afraid.

Tonight, we get to sleep together.

Until then, no matter how many hours we spent beside her at the hospital, there always came a time when we had to leave our daughter behind and go home without her.

At night, she stayed at the hospital while I slept somewhere without her, and when morning came, I would make the journey back to see her again.

But now, it was different.

Tonight, she would still be there.

And when I opened my eyes in the morning, she would still be there.

Something that might sound completely ordinary to someone else felt almost unbelievable to me.

On our first night together at home, I was happy, but nervous too.

The nurses had told us,

“She sleeps well at night.”

Still, I wondered whether she would really sleep at home, in a completely different environment, and part of me imagined that perhaps she would cry all night and none of us would sleep at all.

But while I worried, Ito-chan simply slept.

Quietly.

Peacefully.

There was nothing extraordinary happening, and yet I felt as though I could have watched her forever.

At the hospital, there had always been machines beeping and people moving nearby, but listening to my daughter breathe quietly in our home felt completely different, and as I watched her little sleeping face, I kept thinking,

She’s really here.

Thankfully, Ito-chan was hardly ever a baby who cried through the night.

So it was not her crying that woke us.

It was the alarm on our phone.

At first, she needed milk every three hours, and because she rarely cried to tell us she was hungry, we set alarms through the night and woke whenever they sounded, rubbing the sleep from our eyes as we prepared her milk and slowly gave it through her feeding tube.

Whether it was the middle of the night or early in the morning, three hours would pass and it would be time to feed her again.

Ito-chan would sometimes be sleeping peacefully beside us while we were the ones waking to an alarm and saying,

“It’s time for your milk.”

Looking back, it seems like a slightly strange scene, but that was simply what our new everyday life looked like.

The feeding tube that had frightened me so much in the hospital gradually stopped feeling like something that belonged only to a medical setting and became part of our life at home.

When we bathed her, we supported her little body while being careful not to pull or dislodge the tube, and something that had once made me so nervous slowly became part of the ordinary rhythm of caring for our daughter.

When I first learned to bathe her at the hospital, bath time had been one of those special moments when I could finally feel, I really am this little girl’s mom.

Now that she was home, it became part of our everyday life.

One thing I had not expected to be quite so difficult, however, was how often Ito-chan spit up.

She threw up a lot.

There were so many times when we would finish giving her milk, think everything was fine, and then suddenly have to wipe her down, change her clothes, clean everything up, and watch her carefully all over again.

She spit up so often that once we started going out together, there was one thing we almost never left home without.

A box of tissues.

Not a little packet.

An entire box.

It makes me laugh now, but at the time we genuinely left the house thinking,

She’s probably going to throw up today too.

There were days when thinking about her condition, her feeding tube, and the treatments still waiting somewhere in her future made everything feel heavy, but mixed into those difficult days were more and more moments that would eventually become stories we could laugh about.

Coming home changed more than just the life of the three of us.

My family and relatives were finally able to hold her too.

While she had been in the hospital, the number of people who could really spend time with her had been limited, but once she came home, I began seeing my daughter in so many different arms, with people looking down at her little face, talking to her, smiling at her, and telling her how cute she was.

Whenever I watched someone else holding her, I found myself thinking,

Look how many people you have around you.

After we finished staying with my family, we also spent about three months living with my husband’s parents.

That meant my husband and I did not have to carry everything alone, because there were always people around our daughter—people watching over her, holding her, talking to her, and watching over us as we learned how to be parents.

During pregnancy, every new piece of information about her condition had made me wonder,

Are we really going to be able to raise this child?

But once our life together actually began, I realized that the two of us were never raising her completely on our own.

Surrounded by so many hands, so many watchful eyes, and so many voices saying, “She’s so cute,” our daughter slowly began to grow.

From the time she was born, Ito-chan had always been a baby who stared deeply at people.

If we looked at her, she would look straight back at us, almost as though she were studying our faces and trying to understand who we were.

She could not speak, of course, and we had no way of knowing what she was thinking, but whenever those eyes stayed fixed on us, I would think,

She really is watching us.

And little by little, she began to smile more.

At first, they were small smiles, but before long she started laughing out loud, and eventually she would laugh and laugh until the whole room seemed to change with her.

During pregnancy, I had stared at those ultrasound images of her enormous-looking eyes and wondered what she would look like when she was born.

Now that same little girl was right in front of me, staring into our faces with those eyes and laughing out loud.

When the doctors first explained her condition to us, nearly every thought I had about the future began with fear.

Would she be able to breathe?

Could she see?

Could she hear?

Would she ever be able to drink milk?

Would she be able to walk?

Would she need surgery?

The future seemed filled with questions about things she might not be able to do.

But once we were home and living with her every day, I began to notice something that existed completely outside those fears.

Our daughter was simply living her life.

She slept and woke up, watched people, was held in someone’s arms, and slowly began to smile and laugh.

If I wanted to count all the things she could not yet do, there were probably plenty.

But there were just as many things she was already doing, right there in front of us.

Of course, coming home did not mean our life with hospitals was over.

Treatment for her clubfeet began, and while she was wearing casts, we traveled about ninety minutes each way to the hospital once a week.

Whenever I looked at those casts wrapped around her tiny legs, I was reminded that our daughter really did need treatment, and thinking too far into the future could still frighten me.

Once her feet became more stable, those appointments became every three or four months, while her eyes and ears were checked about every three months, and her cleft palate continued to be monitored at similar intervals as we looked ahead toward surgery after her first birthday.

Little by little, our calendar filled with hospital appointments.

But hospitals were not our entire life.

Between those appointments were ordinary days at home.

We gave her milk, bathed her, slept beside her, held her, laughed with her, cleaned her up when she threw up all over herself, reached for that box of tissues yet again, changed her clothes, and carried on with the day.

And somewhere inside all of those ordinary moments, the feeling that

we are raising a daughter with a medical condition

slowly became less powerful than something much simpler.

We are living with Ito-chan.

Perhaps the moments when I felt most strongly that we had truly become a family were the times when the three of us could go somewhere together.

While Ito-chan was in the hospital, my husband and I had always been the ones going somewhere to see her.

She was waiting at the destination.

But now, things were different.

We could wonder where we should go that day, pack everything she needed, check her feeding tube and milk, remember our inevitable box of tissues, and then leave together.

We were no longer going somewhere to see our daughter.

We were going somewhere with our daughter.

That difference meant more to me than I could explain.

Being together every day.

Opening my eyes in the morning and finding her there.

Sleeping under the same roof at night.

Taking her with us whenever we went somewhere.

To someone else, these things might sound so ordinary that they hardly seem worth putting into words.

But it had taken us one month and twenty days before that kind of “ordinary” life could even begin.

And because of that, simply being together felt like proof that we had finally become a family.

From the time I was pregnant, I had imagined my daughter’s future over and over again, and even after she was born, every new test result made me wonder what might be waiting for us next.

But after coming home and living beside her every day, I slowly began to understand something.

Maybe becoming a family does not mean knowing everything about the future.

We do not stay together because we already know what our child will or will not be able to do.

There can still be questions.

There can still be fear.

And even with all of that, we wake every three hours to give her milk, wipe her clean when she throws up, bathe her, sleep beside her, travel to the hospital, and laugh when she laughs.

Maybe becoming a family is simply sharing enough of those ordinary days, over and over again, until one day you realize that they have become your life.

Ito-chan.

You were living each day in that tiny body of yours.

And beside you, we were learning how to live each of those new days too.

Instead of looking only at what you could not do, we began to notice what you could do today.

Instead of staring endlessly into a future we could not yet know, we began to look at the little girl who was right in front of us.

And somewhere along the way,

the life that had begun for you inside a hospital

slowly became

the everyday life of our family.

To Bring You Home

🇯🇵Read in Japanese

Before my daughter was born, I had always imagined that when a baby became hungry, she would cry, her parents would pick her up and feed her, and once her little stomach was full, she would eventually drift off to sleep.

It was such an ordinary picture of life with a newborn that I had never even thought of it as something that might need to be learned, and it had never occurred to me that for some babies, drinking milk itself could be difficult, or that something so seemingly natural might require practice.

Not long after Ito-chan was born, there was one time when she managed to drink about 10 milliliters of milk by mouth.

Ten milliliters.

It may sound like such a small amount, but to us at the time, those 10 milliliters felt enormous, and simply knowing that she had managed to drink made us so happy that we immediately began imagining what might come next.

Maybe 10 milliliters would become 20.

Maybe 20 would become 30.

And perhaps, little by little, there would come a day when she could drink everything she needed from a bottle.

Without realizing it, we had already begun imagining that future for her.

But after that, Ito-chan was barely able to drink milk by mouth at all, and even when we brought the bottle to her lips, she would do little more than lick it.

Sucking, swallowing, filling her stomach—things I had always assumed a baby would simply know how to do—were not simple at all for our daughter.

Because Ito-chan had been born with a cleft palate, while she was still in the NICU, a special oral appliance was made for her in the hope that it might help her drink more easily.

I remember hoping that perhaps this would be the thing that changed everything, but even after we tried it, there was no significant difference in the way she drank, and the amount she could take by mouth hardly increased.

She drank 10 milliliters at the beginning.

So why couldn’t she drink now?

What had changed?

What could we do to help her?

No matter how many times we asked ourselves those questions, we did not have the answers.

But just because she could not drink by mouth did not mean she could go without milk, because her little body still needed nutrition in order to live, grow, and become stronger.

And so, Ito-chan received her milk through a feeding tube.

We did not give it all at once; using a syringe, we slowly delivered the milk through the tube and into her stomach over about thirty minutes, watching her carefully as we went.

It was nothing like the feeding I had imagined while I was pregnant, with a baby cradled in my arms and a bottle held gently to her mouth, but even though it looked completely different from what I had pictured, this was still our daughter’s meal.

After Ito-chan was transferred to the university hospital, we began learning how to do all of this ourselves so that we would be able to care for her after she came home.

We learned how to give milk through the feeding tube, how to use the syringe, and eventually, how to insert the feeding tube ourselves.

That frightened me more than I can describe.

When I watched the nurses slide the thin tube through her nose and down into her stomach, their hands seemed so steady and certain that the procedure almost looked simple.

But the moment a nurse placed the tube in my own hand and said,

“Okay, now you try,”

everything changed.

Am I really going to do this myself?

Am I really supposed to put this tube through that tiny nose, into that tiny body, with my own hands?

I understood why I had to learn.

I knew that Ito-chan would still need to receive milk through the tube after leaving the hospital, and I understood that if we wanted to bring her home, my husband and I had to be able to care for her ourselves.

Knowing that did not stop my hands from hesitating.

At first, I simply could not make myself push the tube forward, and every time I tried, Ito-chan cried.

Watching her tiny face crumple as she cried while I continued guiding the tube through her nose was painful, because even though I knew I was doing it for her, it still felt as though I was the one hurting her.

I kept saying the same thing silently in my head.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I don’t want to hurt you.

I’m doing this because you need it.

No matter how many times I reminded myself of that, there was no way I could look at my crying daughter and feel nothing as I pushed that tube farther in.

My husband practiced too.

It was not enough for only one of us to know how to do it, because once we were home, the two of us would be raising her together, and that meant both of us needed to know how to insert the tube, use the syringe, and give her milk safely.

With practice, the steps gradually became more familiar, and eventually I stopped freezing completely whenever I held the tube in my hand, but even now, I do not think “getting used to it” is the right way to describe what happened.

It never became something I did not care about, and hearing her cry never stopped affecting me.

It was simply that, little by little, the feeling that we have to be able to do this because she needs us to became stronger than the fear.

There was something else about feeding Ito-chan that I struggled to understand.

I could not tell when she was hungry.

I had always thought that babies cried when they became hungry, and that their parents would hear that cry and naturally understand, Oh, she wants milk.

But Ito-chan gave us very little reaction that we could clearly interpret that way, so when I looked at her, I often had no idea whether she was hungry, whether she was still full, whether she wanted milk, or whether she did not.

So feeding her was not a matter of waiting until she asked for it.

Instead, we followed a schedule—so many feedings a day, every certain number of hours—and when the time came, we prepared the milk, connected the syringe to her feeding tube, and slowly gave it to her over about thirty minutes.

She did not cry because she was hungry and then receive her milk.

We looked at the clock and said,

“It’s almost time for your milk.”

That became our version of feeding our baby.

She could barely drink anything by mouth, but we still brought the bottle to her lips, and even when all she did was lick a little milk, I watched her tiny mouth and hoped that perhaps even that small experience might someday lead to drinking.

Before Ito-chan was born, I had thought of feeding a baby as something simple: hold her in your arms, give her a bottle, let her finish, and help her burp afterward.

But as I watched my daughter, I began to understand something I had never thought about before.

Drinking is part of living.

Even if Ito-chan could not drink by mouth, her body still needed nourishment, and because there was a feeding tube, we had another way to give her what she needed.

The milk we slowly delivered over those thirty minutes entered her little body and became part of everything she would need in order to grow.

Her tiny bones.

Her muscles.

Her skin.

The body that might one day roll over, sit up, and perhaps stand.

All of it was being built, little by little, from the milk traveling through that thin tube.

Once I began thinking about it that way, those thirty-minute feedings started to look different to me.

At first, all I could see was what she could not do.

She can’t drink normally.

Why can’t she drink?

But eventually I began to see something else.

If she could not drink by mouth, there was a feeding tube.

And because there was a feeding tube, our daughter could still receive the nutrition she needed to grow.

For now, maybe that was enough.

We still did not know whether she would eventually be able to drink by mouth, or how much she might someday be able to drink, but I was beginning to understand that we did not have to spend today looking only at the things she could not yet do because of a future none of us could predict.

Ito-chan stayed at the university hospital for about three weeks.

During those three weeks, we learned, one by one, the things we would need to know before bringing her home: how to manage her feeding tube, how to use the syringe, how to give her milk, how to bathe her, and what changes in her body or condition we needed to watch for.

Every time we learned one more thing, I felt the same thought quietly forming inside me.

We’re one step closer to home.

At the first hospital, the doctors and nurses had protected our daughter’s life.

At the university hospital, they were teaching us what we needed to know so that, little by little, we could become the ones who cared for her.

And then, about one month and twenty days after Ito-chan was born, the day we had been waiting for finally arrived.

She was going home.

While I was pregnant, I had simply assumed that I would give birth, spend a few days in the hospital, and then go home with my baby.

But it took about one month and twenty days before the three of us could finally leave a hospital together.

It had been a long time.

It had felt so very long.

Every day we went to the NICU, every drive my husband and I made together on his days off, every ninety-minute train ride I made alone carrying milk when he was working, every time tears came simply because I saw my daughter, every bath when I began to feel, Oh, I really am this little girl’s mom, every moment my hands froze because I was afraid to insert the feeding tube, every time I silently apologized while she cried, and every thirty-minute feeding we practiced with a syringe—all of it seemed to have been leading us toward this one day.

On the day of her discharge, we walked out of the hospital with our daughter.

Until then, almost everything Ito-chan knew of the world had existed inside hospitals: white ceilings, the sounds of machines, the voices of doctors and nurses, the NICU, and hospital rooms.

That had been almost her entire world since the day she was born.

And then, on that day, Ito-chan passed through the hospital doors.

For the first time in her life, she felt the air outside.

There was a sky above her.

There was wind.

Cars moved along the road, and people walked past us.

It was an ordinary scene that my husband and I had seen countless times before, but for our daughter, every part of it belonged to a world she had never experienced.

I looked at her little face and thought,

This is outside, Ito-chan.

You’re feeling the outside air for the very first time.

And the moment I realized that, the entire month and twenty days behind us seemed to rush back into my mind at once, and something I could not put into words rose inside my chest.

Finally, the three of us were going home.

This time, I would not be the only one returning home.

I would not have to leave my daughter in the hospital and spend another night in a house without her.

Today, Ito-chan was coming with us.

The empty place I had felt every time I returned home was finally going to be filled by the person who had always belonged there.

Of course, leaving the hospital did not mean the fear disappeared.

At home, there would not always be a nurse standing nearby, and there would not be a doctor just down the hall.

When it was time for milk, we would give it through her feeding tube ourselves, and if that tube came out, we would have to put it back in.

We would be the ones watching her breathing, her expressions, and the small changes in her body, wondering whether everything was okay.

I was happy.

And I was scared.

Neither feeling erased the other; somehow, they existed together.

Still, the three of us walked out of that hospital.

Ito-chan.

One month and twenty days after you were born, you felt the outside air for the first time.

And on that same day, for the first time, the three of us went home together.

Maybe our beginning came a little later than the “normal” one I had imagined while I was pregnant, and maybe the way we brought you home looked nothing like the picture I once had in my mind.

You still had a feeding tube.

You could barely drink milk by mouth.

There were still so many things we needed to learn and so many things we would eventually have to face.

But the moment the three of us passed through those hospital doors and you felt the outside air for the very first time, the life we had been waiting for finally began.

Ito-chan.

Welcome home.

And welcome,

to the world outside.

What Does “Normal” Even Mean?

🇯🇵Read in Japanese

About three days after giving birth to my daughter, I was discharged from the hospital.

I had always imagined that leaving the hospital after giving birth would mean walking out with my baby in my arms, going home together, and beginning our new life as a family from that day forward.

At least, that was what I had imagined during my pregnancy.

You give birth to your baby, you hold her, you bring her home, and when night comes, she sleeps somewhere beside you; when she cries, you wake up and feed her.

I knew it would be exhausting.

But I still believed that kind of life would simply begin the moment my baby was born.

But on the day I left the hospital, my daughter stayed behind in the NICU.

I was discharged.

She was still a patient.

Only three days earlier, we had been together every second of every day, sharing the same body, and yet the moment she was born, our lives had somehow separated into two different places.

I went home.

She stayed at the hospital.

I knew I had given birth to a baby, but when I returned home, there was no baby there.

At night, there was no crying.

There was no tiny body sleeping beside me.

She was no longer inside my belly, either.

She wasn’t inside me.

And she wasn’t beside me.

My heart could not quite understand what had happened.

I cried every night.

I missed her.

And the more I wanted to see her, the more I found myself wondering,

“Why isn’t she here?”

I knew that I had given birth.

My body knew it too.

My stomach no longer looked or felt the way it had during pregnancy, and everything about my body told me that childbirth had happened.

And yet my arms were empty.

Sometimes the whole thing felt so unreal that I wondered whether I had truly given birth at all.

I had become a mother.

But I did not yet feel like one.

Somewhere inside me, I had imagined that becoming a mother would happen instantly, that the moment my baby was born something inside me would change and I would simply know,

“I’m her mom now.”

But that was not how it happened for me.

Technically, I became her mother the moment she was born.

Emotionally, I think I was still trying to catch up.

After I was discharged, we went to the NICU every single day.

To see her.

And to bring her milk.

Whenever my husband had a day off, we drove to the hospital together.

On the days he had to work, I traveled alone by train, about ninety minutes each way.

Nearly three hours of traveling there and back.

My body was still recovering from childbirth, and carrying milk with me while making that journey almost every day was exhausting.

Looking back now, I think that was one of the hardest periods of all.

My body had not fully recovered.

At night, I often cried because I missed my daughter.

But when morning came, the same thought always returned.

“I’m going to see her today.”

If my husband was off work, we drove together.

If he was working, I took the train alone.

The way I got there changed.

But there was never a day when I did not want to go.

Whenever he could, my husband also came after work, traveling to the hospital just to spend whatever time he could with our daughter before going home again.

Without realizing it, our entire daily life had begun to revolve around the NICU.

Even when I was at home, I was thinking about the next time I would be able to see her.

Some days, I would walk into the NICU, look at my daughter’s face, and tears would simply begin to fall.

Nothing bad had happened.

The doctor had not just given us frightening news.

Sometimes she was simply lying there.

And still, I cried.

She was beautiful.

I had missed her.

She was alive today.

She was trying so hard.

I wanted to take her home.

I wanted to know why I couldn’t simply bring my own baby home with me.

There were so many emotions mixed together that I often had no idea what the tears actually meant.

Sometimes I would be smiling at her while tears ran down my face.

And sometimes I wondered,

“What would we be doing right now if everything had been normal?”

If she had been born and come home with us.

Would I be holding her at home?

Would we be exhausted from waking up all night?

Would I be feeding her, changing her diaper, giving her a bath?

The life with a newborn that I had imagined during pregnancy had not begun.

Instead, every day we traveled to the hospital and visited our daughter in the NICU, surrounded by medical equipment.

That was our postpartum life.

Feeding was different from what I had imagined too.

At first, I was able to produce some breast milk, but before long my supply became difficult to maintain, and we transitioned to formula fairly early.

Because our daughter had a cleft palate, even drinking by mouth required practice.

Something as simple as “feeding my baby” looked very different from the picture I had carried in my mind before she was born.

Maybe the old version of me would have looked at each of those differences and thought,

“This isn’t normal.”

Normally, a baby goes home with her parents.

Normally, parenting begins at home.

Normally, a baby drinks milk by mouth.

Normally—

But the more time I spent going back and forth to the NICU, the less certain I became about that word.

What does “normal” even mean?

My daughter was not the only baby in the NICU.

There were many babies there, each hospitalized for different reasons, each surrounded by different equipment, each with families coming to sit beside them.

Being there made me wonder whether there had ever really been one correct way for life with a newborn to begin.

Some babies go home almost immediately.

Some spend weeks or months in the hospital.

Some can drink milk on their own from the beginning, while others have to practice.

Some need help to breathe.

And each of those beginnings belongs to a real child and a real family.

My daughter spent about a month in the NICU.

Day after day, we continued going to see her, and slowly, time passed.

Eventually, the doctors told us something we had desperately hoped to hear.

It looked as though she might be able to manage breathing on her own.

That meant more to me than I could explain.

Breathing had frightened us since before she was born.

We had been told that she might need respiratory support, and yet this tiny girl had spent the first month of her life working so hard, breath after breath, until we finally heard the words we had been waiting for.

She might be able to breathe on her own.

One month.

Maybe that doesn’t sound very long.

But to us, it felt enormous.

After about a month, our daughter was transferred from the hospital where she had been born to a university hospital closer to our home.

She still wasn’t coming home.

But she was coming closer.

And somehow, even that felt like progress.

At the university hospital, the next stage began.

This time, we were not only learning about our daughter’s condition.

We were learning how to care for her ourselves.

The nurses began teaching us, one step at a time, some of the things they had been doing for her in the hospital, because once she eventually came home, there would not always be a nurse standing beside us if something happened.

We would be the ones there.

So we learned how to handle her feeding tube, how to give her milk, what changes in her condition we needed to watch for, and how to bathe her safely.

We were also told that she could be prone to middle ear infections, so when bathing or showering her, we needed to be especially careful not to let water get into her ears.

Even something as ordinary as giving our baby a bath was something we had to learn slowly and carefully.

And yet, bath time became one of my favorite moments.

For me, bathing her was not simply about keeping her clean.

It became one of the moments when I could truly feel,

“I’m this little girl’s mom.”

Every night, I had returned to a home without my daughter.

There had been moments when I felt so disconnected from motherhood that I wondered whether I had really given birth at all.

But when I supported her tiny body with my own hands, gently poured warm water over her, washed her face and body, and watched every little expression she made, something inside me changed.

Of course, I was nervous.

I had to be careful not to get water into her ears.

I worried about whether I was holding her correctly, whether she was comfortable, whether I was doing everything the way I had been taught.

“Does that feel nice?”

I would talk to her while I washed her, watching her face and touching her tiny arms and legs.

In the NICU, it was sometimes difficult not to notice the machines and tubes before anything else.

But during bath time, I could forget about them for a little while.

She was not a patient surrounded by medical equipment.

She was simply my daughter, resting in my hands.

Feeling the warmth of her tiny body against my palms, I could finally think,

“Oh… I really am her mom.”

I had not suddenly felt like a mother the moment she was born.

For me, that feeling came little by little.

Holding her.

Bringing her milk.

Traveling to see her.

And bathing her with my own hands.

Bath time was something we needed to learn before she could eventually come home, but for me, it became something more than practice.

It became one of the small moments I looked forward to most.

A moment when I could feel that I was becoming her mother.

At the same time, even as we learned how to care for her at home, there were still many things about the future that frightened me.

One of them was her feet.

Both of her feet had turned strongly inward since birth.

We were told that because her clubfoot was significant, she would need continued treatment as she grew, and that surgery might eventually become necessary.

She could not even hold her head up yet.

Rolling over, sitting, standing, walking—all of those things still belonged to a future far away.

And yet I was already being asked to imagine a future in which the word “surgery” might stand somewhere between my daughter and the day she learned to walk.

That frightened me.

Would these tiny feet someday support her?

Would she be able to stand?

Would she be able to walk?

Looking at her feet, I sometimes found myself worrying about a future that had not even happened yet.

But something inside me had changed since pregnancy.

Back then, I had been afraid of a future I could not see.

Now, I had my daughter in front of me.

If she needed surgery someday, we would think about it then.

If she needed treatment, we would face it with her when that day came.

Right now, she did not need us to solve the question of whether she would someday walk.

She needed us to learn how to care for her today.

Before she was born, I had assumed that parenting was something you somehow learned naturally once your baby came home.

But we had a few extra things to learn.

At first, I was terrified.

Can we really do all of this ourselves at home?

What if something happens?

What if the milk doesn’t go in properly?

What if there is a problem with the tube?

What if her breathing changes?

If I allowed myself to keep asking “what if,” there was no end to the fear.

But every time a nurse showed us how to do something, and every time we practiced it ourselves, another thought slowly began to appear beside the fear.

Maybe we can do this.

Everything was new.

Of course we were not going to be good at it immediately.

If we didn’t understand something, we could ask.

If we couldn’t do something yet, we could practice again.

Our daughter was learning how to drink.

Maybe we were learning how to become her parents.

I had not suddenly transformed into a mother who knew how to do everything the moment she was born.

Instead, I traveled to the hospital every day.

I held her.

I cried.

I listened to the doctors.

I learned from the nurses.

I bathed her and felt the warmth of her body in my own hands.

And little by little, I learned more about the tiny person who was my daughter.

Maybe that was how I became her mother.

Every night, I had cried in a home where my baby was missing.

There were moments when the whole experience felt so unreal that I wondered whether I had truly given birth.

But when I look back now, I realize that all of it was part of me becoming her mother.

The days when my husband and I drove to the hospital together.

The days when he had to work and I carried milk with me on the ninety-minute train ride alone.

The moments when simply seeing her face in the NICU made me cry.

And the bath times when I held her tiny body and thought,

“I really am this little girl’s mom.”

All of it was part of the same journey.

And slowly, another thought began to grow inside me.

Instead of asking,

“Why did this happen to her?”

I began to think,

“Maybe she came to us because she could live with us.”

There would be her condition.

Her breathing.

Her feeding.

Her feet.

The treatments and surgeries she might need in the future.

None of it would necessarily be easy, and there might be things waiting for us that we could not yet imagine.

But somewhere inside me, I began to believe:

Maybe she was born to us because, with us, she could live.

There was no special reason for me to believe that.

It wasn’t because I thought we were strong enough to handle everything.

If anything, I was still frightened of almost everything.

But I began to feel that there might be some meaning in the fact that this little girl had come into our lives.

So we would learn.

If we couldn’t do something, we would practice.

If we didn’t understand something, we would ask someone to teach us.

If we became afraid, we would face one thing at a time.

Just as our daughter was slowly learning what she needed in order to live,

we could slowly learn how to live beside her.

What is a “normal family,” anyway?

I still don’t really know.

Is it a family that takes their baby home immediately after birth?

A mother who breastfeeds?

Parents who never have to use medical equipment?

A childhood without constant hospital visits?

I don’t think that is what makes a family a family.

Maybe we didn’t need to become anyone else’s version of one.

We could become a family in our own way.

Our daughter had her own pace.

And we had our own beginning.

That was enough.

After one month in the NICU, as I watched our daughter move to a university hospital closer to home, I slowly began to understand that.

Ito-chan,

after you were born, I thought about the word “normal” again and again.

But eventually, whether our life was normal or not began to matter less and less.

You were breathing today.

We could see you.

Something you couldn’t do yesterday might become something you could do tomorrow.

And we would have another day together.

That was enough.

We still had a little way to go before we could finally bring you home.

But we were getting closer.

Not because you needed to become our daughter—

you already were.

But because we were still learning

how to become your mom and dad.

Looking back now,

I think we needed that month.

Not to learn how to have a “normal” family,

but to begin becoming

our family.