What if we could have one big pod we share with our babies. And for the women whose babies can't/won't/don't nurse, what if they could sleep, blessed sleep, in a medically induced comatose state, uninterrupted by beeping monitors, crises, and family woes, until they get out of the hospital.

The nurses could do formula feedings every couple of hours. There are many of us in here who don't have that much milk because the hormones for milk kick in during the last trimester of pregnancy. So we pump all day for precious little and they supplement with formula anyway. At least in a coma we'd get some sleep, so we could have energy when these tiny creatures come home.

And if we were in the pod with them, we'd be attached but not constantly bringing in germs from the outside world. Many babies in here catch colds. The only discussion in here more prevalent than weight loss is germs, and then sometimes those become the same conversation, at which point I go to the cafeteria.

By lunchtime, I'm giggling, looking at the women, flipping through their magazines, shaking their heads, dog-earing pages of clothes they wonder if they'll ever fit in again. With a NICU coma, mothers could lose significant weight by the time their babies are released.

Then I remember something. My mother was obsessed with Elizabeth Taylor when I was growing up. She adored her because my mother struggled with weight, and it comforted her to know that someone so glamorous and famous and gorgeous and smart struggled as well. One day, right after Elizabeth Taylor separated from Sen. John Warner, my mother was reading from some magazine, shaking her head, saying what a shame it was, poor woman:

"She really believes that each marriage is forever."

I don't look up from the newspaper. My mother's devotion to celebrities was a cause of much teenage embarrassment for me.

She starts laughing. "See, I'm not the only one!"

I look up. "Okay, you're not the only one what?"

"Listen to this. She checked herself into a Beverly Hills rehabilitation clinic, poor thing. And then she tried to talk the doctor into putting her into a coma so she could lose weight. She says: 'You have to, I can't stop eating if I'm awake!'"

Shaking her head, my mother stands up to get more coffee and a cookie. "Only in America. People have gone completely mad." She says it, but she's not really judgmental. The whole point is that she's comforted by a country that can afford to think about such things.

Matilda is sleeping deeply and there's an hour to go before I have to wake her up to feed her, so I take my laptop and try to find out if Elizabeth Taylor ever went into a coma to lose weight. I find out nothing, but I do see the creepy doctor in the hospital cafeteria, so I plop myself down next to him, at his table, most uninvited.

He has a patient file lying open on the table. One of the babies needs surgery, and there's a highlighted note that the mother took antidepressants during pregnancy. I'm so nosy I can read very well upside down. He doesn't close the file when I sit down. In fact, he leaves these patient files out in the open in the NICU all the time, and it's common practice at the nurse's station, too. I've asked him about the privacy policy before, but he never gives me a real answer.

One of the games I play here, mostly to keep myself busy, is to try to think of something compelling to say so Dr. Creepy will look me in the eye. Nothing has worked so far. Not even when I told him that upon checking into the hospital - three centimeters dilated, rushed in by ambulance paramedics, seized by doctors desperate to stop the labor -- I told my husband to purposely spell my name wrong on the forms. He spelled it Rivkeh instead of Rivka so I could track where the hospital sells my name and personal data. I told the doctor that within 24 hours, we started receiving junk mail at home, addressed to Rivkeh, with offers for maternity clothes, diet programs, and baby gear. He squirmed a little at that one, but never looked up.

Today, I'm hoping I've found the trigger: "Hi! Could you medically induce a coma for someone if they wanted to go to sleep for two weeks to lose weight?"

Dr. Creepy looks up. Gotcha! An hour later, he not only tells me how it could be done, but now that he thinks about it, you wouldn't even need to risk infection with an I-V. You could use a simple nasal catheter.

I thank him, take my laptop back to the NICU, and spend the next five weeks sitting next to my preemie for 15 hours a day writing the first draft of my novel, TWO WEEKS UNDER. I pester Dr. Creepy in the cafeteria most days with questions, until one day he does something completely new.

Unprovoked, he looks up, smiles, and asks: "Will you mention me in your story?"

"Mention? You've inspired a character!"

He beams with pride. And when he smiles, he looks like a morph between Ted Bundy and Oliver North.