Guilt

Last night, I read a thread about a TV documentary, in which a mother left her sick child in hospital 3 weeks without seeing her. The comments in this forum thread left me wracked with guilt as it made me think back to when Robert was in SCBU. They were saying how they didn't want to leave their baby's side, that they only took a cigarette break because they could look into the room and see their baby anyway.

When Robert was in SCBU he was there for 5 days. I saw him in the incubator the night he was born, and then went up to sleep. I went down in the morning, and thereafter went to see him every 4 hours. I didn't stay very long really, mainly just to feed him and change him, and settle him back down to sleep again, then left to go back up to my room on the ward. I didn't stay with him all the time, nor did I really feel the wish to. I know that the circumstances surrounding his birth left me numb and unable to bond with him. I know that deep down, the first few days I was thinking "why am I going to see this baby?" because he didn't feel like mine. I think a part of me thought I was a fraud, that the mother of the baby would come along and say "thanks for feeding and changing him for me, I'll be taking him home now."

But even knowing this, I still feel wracked with guilt now, thinking how I was only there for Robert when I was needed to be, not because I wanted to be. I feel awful knowing this, whether it was out of my control or not.