Nicole Conn’s Thoughts

nicole

Nicole Conn provides an update on all things preemie, Gwen and more. 

People ask me this question all the time:  If I knew then what I know now about all the ramifications of Nicholas’s birth and subsequent journey — would I still make the same decision to keep him on this planet.  Before I answer that question, let me tell you where I’ve been since Nicholas was born and the airing of the documentary little man on Showtime, chronicling his premature birth (born 100 days too early at 1 pound) and now, late summer, 2009 — seven  years later.

It saddens me to report that my partner of 11 years, Gwen, decided she could no longer be part of our journey, which admittedly was rife with chaos, medical emergencies, nurses in our home, and running a mini-hospital.  But I must confess, I was dumb-struck.  Hadn’t we just weathered the worst of this and made it to the other side?  Didn’t the documentary I had labored over for three years, depleting my now thoroughly exhausted supplies of energy, prove that we had created our very own happy ending?  Hadn’t she said we were in it forever, for good or for bad?

I guess I wasn’t paying attention.  Because as Nicholas turned five, and had finally gotten off the dreaded central IV line, off the dangerous blood thinners for all his clots, and was now attending real school, I suppose I didn’t want to acknowledge that Gwen had checked out long ago.  Further she resented that I had destroyed the perfect picture she had in her head of her version of a happy ending, by bringing Nicholas into our lives in the first place.

Gwen not only divorced me  — but also our son — and the litigation was vicious.  She was done being his parent.  Two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, Gwen and I settled our differences.  I was to retain full legal and physical custody of our son, Nicholas, and we would share joint custody of our daughter, Gabrielle.  I’m happy to report Justice was served in Nicholas’s case and the legal system has taken good care of him.  But through it all, I cried many tears watching a union which had made it through the devastation of a severely premature birth and all its insane aftermath, create an even worse devastation in the destruction of our family.  I guess a disabled child inside a marriage can wreak the most extreme and violent reactions.  And in time I had to acknowledge my own willfullness — in keeping Nicholas with us — as being the primary reason for the failure of our marriage, not to mention that when a parent’s focus is on their disabled child, it drains the marriage of its lifeforce.  I believe Gwen and I have gone on to forgive one another and try to maintain a wonderful partnership in raising our daughter, Gabrielle.

But at the end of the day, between the exorbitant legal fees, and taking my eye off the ball in the economic down turn as I focused on Nicholas’ never-ending medical issues during the whole stock market crash, and even after little man debuted, I had lost pretty much everything I’d ever worked for.

Last October, during one particularly brutal night, I cried for hours missing my daughter during a weekend she was with Gwen, trying to square custody visitation with the inalienable right every mother has to be with their child 100% of the time.  I was keenly aware that as a writer/director I had no “real”  saleable skills, that I never so much as wanted to consider a future relationship after the brutal beating I had just gone through, and besides, who would want this tired ol’ mare now a skip and a jump away from 50.   What was I going to do? If anything happened to me, no one – not even my family was willing to step up the plate and care for Nicholas.  I hit the bottom of rock bottom.

Things were as bleak and awful as they could be.  Nicholas had a terrible time adjusting to the changes – and couldn’t understand the new house we were living in or that his sister was absent half the time.  Gabrielle couldn’t understand why — if I really wanted to keep the family together, that “you don’t just make that happen, Mommy CoCo!”   She also could not grasp why her brother wasn’t going back and forth with her between both houses.  I was trying to figure out how in the hell I was going to make a living as a frumpy disheveled mom in the land of eternally young and hip.

A couple of weeks later of feeling woefully sorry for myself, I got an email telling me that Preemie Magazine had folded.  I got out of my own head for a moment and realized how devastating this was for preemie community.  The magazine was not only the most amazing resource for our community, but the smartly laid out and gorgeous magazine was the ONLY one-stop shopping for the universe that preemie parents encounter on a daily basis.  Further, founder Deb Discenza and her wonderful staff had always been so amazingly supportive of little man. I decided to get in touch with her to tell her how sorry I was about Preemie Magazine and lament the frustrations we were both sharing.  Deb’s amazing and a force of nature and was still going strong helping the community with her work at MOST (Moms of SuperTwins) and PreemieCare.org.  We ended up yattering on the phone for almost two hours.

That single phone discussion changed many things for me.  Deb and I continued to chat (always endlessly) and discovered beyond our insane dedication to our preemie kids, that we both still desired to work inside the community and to create much needed products for the community we know so well.  We quickly realized that our working styles suited each other perfectly, that our intense dual-Scorpio drive would be just the engine we needed to propel this vision forward.  And our mutual admiration society would be the harmony we needed to bless the creation of our new ventures: PreemieWorld.com which will become the go-to spot for all things preemie along with our blogs where Deb and I can discuss all the many issues we personally encounter daily as mothers of premature infants.

The Preemie Parents Survival Guide to the NICU – How to Maintain Your Sanity & Create a New Normal — was the brain child of Deb’s and my many discussions.   We so badly wanted to provide what we had both wished fervently we had during our stay at the NICU:  another parent, helping us through the insane journey of being in the NICU, holding our hands.  That is what The Surivival Guide is: holding your hand through this same journey.

PreemieWorld.com will also host the little man DVD and soundtrack as well as the celebrated NICU Preemie Tag.  Our Preemie Power Newsletters will launch in the next couple of months and will be filled with articles, discussion, forums.
You know the ol’ adage, when one door closes.  In this case, it could never be more true.  Deb and I are thrilled to present PreemieWorld.com to all of you, and especially those of you who have written or emailed us to share your own extraordinary Preemie journeys.  We are so excited to reconnect with all of you and to have all of us share the joy, heartaches, stresses, and triumphs that are cornerstones of the uniquely fascinating journey of the Preemie Parent.

And the answer to the question I posed above?  Nicholas is, and always will be, the single most generous spirit I’ve ever encountered.  At 7 he is finally speaking – not just words, but purposeful communication!  Yes it’s still a mix of Nicholese and some awesome new words; (“banana, rectangle, no pinching-just kisses” ).  He sings incessantly… He reminds me daily not only to breathe life in–in the moment—but to do so with calm, grace and the simple purpose of being.  His gentle smile and guttural chuckle are infectious and I cannot NOT smile when I’m with him.  Gabrielle still remains my heart – Nicholas my soul.

So the answer is, yes, even if I knew then, what I know now — I would do it all over again, in exactly the same way, in a New York second.

And, now, Nicholas, Gabrielle and I look forward to sharing the remainder of this journey with all of you…