My babies

I have a tendency to think of all of them as "my babies". None of them are MINE, technically, but for 12 hours, 2 days a week they are. I sit in this room and I watch them. Verrrrry closely. I know every little tiny thing about them. What their insides sound like, what their lungs look like, how much they pee, (in milliliters), what their heart rate is at any moment, how much air they take in when they breathe. Or choose not to breathe, which is what I've spent the majority of this particular shift fixing. We're so demanding around here.
I sit in the chair and I watch the monitors. The alarms go off on the ventilators and I jump up. In just the short amount of time that it's taken me to type this, I've had to stop four times already to push buttons, silence alarms, increase the oxygen, (or turn it down if they're getting too much), peer in at them in their little houses (incubators) to make sure everything looks alright, give the babies extra breaths from the ventilators because they weren't doing enough on their own. Yes, we call this intensive care for a reason.
Premature babies generally need closer watching than most of our other babies here. These two little peanuts I'm caring for tonight especially, they need help with something or other every few minutes. They weigh less than three pounds each and they don't have a lot of reserve. Things happen quickly and if you're not close by to remedy a situation, it can go downhill very fast.
So I sit in their room in semi-darkness, (it is nighttime after all), and I read my book. Until the next time an alarm goes off, and there I am again, jumping up, pushing buttons, breathing for babies, checking their lines and tubes to make sure they're all in the right position. I may not have given birth to these babies, but surely, for these 12 hours, they are mine, and I care for them as if they were.