"Nathan Meets Santa" (12/19/13)

This was the first morning that I woke up without Kevin by my side.  Although having my mom there was nice, it was a little nerve racking not having the father of my children there with me.  This was the first day since we got to Cincinnati that Kevin had not been right there by my side.  I remember being in Labor and Delivery and my parents offering to stay with me overnight if Kevin wanted to go to the hotel and sleep in a real bed instead of that tiny uncomfortable pull out couch.  He declined every time.  He was not going to leave my side for one moment and I am glad he didn’t.  What would we do if I had gone in for an emergency C-Section over night and he was at the hotel and missed the birth of his babies?  I don’t think he would have ever forgiven himself and I would have been frightened without him.  We knew that there was a chance that he wouldn’t have been able to come in the O.R. with me if it was an emergency C-section and they would have had to knock me out.  But luckily, we had about 2 hours to prepare for the surgery and he was able to be in there and hold my hand throughout the whole thing and see his sons in their first moments of life.

My mom dropped me off at the hospital around 10:30 that morning.  I know I’ve said this before and I will say it again; I absolutely loved seeing my baby in the morning when I got there.  He seemed to be doing very well and today was special because of two things. The first being that Nathan was 1-week-old today! He had been in the real world for 7 days and seemed to be doing really well.  The second special thing was that Nathan was going to meet Santa tonight!  The NICU was having a Christmas Party and Santa was going to come and visit all the babies in the NICU.  I thought that was really sweet of them to do that for all the babies who weren’t able to go to the malls and meet Santa that way. 

As I walked into Nathan’s POD, Rose, the Fellow, was standing by Nathan.  But I also noticed that Nathan’s neighbor was no longer there.  It broke my heart.  I had a pretty good idea what happened but I asked Rose to confirm if the baby had passed and she shook her head that he had.  Heaven had gained another angel baby.

Because Kevin was not in the NICU with me, it was up to me to get all the information regarding Nathan myself.  I didn’t have a second pair of ears to help me so I brought a notebook to the NICU so I could write down all the details of our son and relay them to Kevin.  “Nathan’s Daily Notes” is what I called my notebook.  It became very helpful because there were so many statistics and numbers being thrown around that there was no way I would remember everything. 

I had my notebook ready to jot down all the information that Rose was about to give me.  Nathan weighed 1 lb 7.4 oz last night.  He was gaining weight, which was great and you could definitely tell in the way he looked.  His glucose levels in the day’s prior had been a bit high for the Doctors liking but they had gone down to 147, which was getting better.  Rose then told me the results of the head ultra sound that was done the day before.  She said that Nathan had NO BRAIN BLEEDS!! I was so happy!  I prepared myself for him to have bleeds since it is so common in babies his size but the fact that he had none was so exciting!  She did explain that babies have something in their heads that is shaped like a butterfly and the veins on one side of Nathan’s head were slightly bigger than normal.  They weren’t concerned about it now but they said they would check it in one month. 

Today, Nathan had two nurses.  The main nurse was named Kelly, and then she had a student with her whose name I can’t remember.  They were both very sweet but I was a little nervous having a ‘student’ take care of my son.  But as I got to know her, I learned that she has been a nurse for some time now and she was just transferring into the NICU setting, so that made me feel better. 

I forget when we found this out, but we did know that Nathan had a blood infection but we just weren’t sure what kind of infection.  Rose told us that they were going to do a lumbar puncture on Nathan in a few hours just to make sure that Nathan didn’t have the infection in his spinal fluid and that he didn’t have meningitis.  Nathan was a tough little guy so I knew he would handle that lumbar puncture just fine.  Around noon, Rose came over with a few other people to do the lumbar puncture.  I went to go pump while they did this because I didn’t think they needed a nervous mother hovering over their shoulders while they stuck a needle in her baby’s spine.  When I got back, Nathan had a Band-Aid on his low back and they all said that he did Amazingly!  I wasn’t surprised.  Nathan was the toughest little baby I had ever met.

Since Nathan had just had his puncture and was probably sore, I was not able to do Skin-to-Skin with him so I just sat by him and kept him company until his next care time.  As I was sitting there, the Neonatologist came over and wanted to talk to me.  He said that he looked at the spinal fluid and just from the naked eye, he was fairly confidant that Nathan did not have the infection in his spinal fluid.  That made me, once again, very happy and I of course texted Kevin right away to tell him with the Doctor said.

I was getting hungry so I headed down to the solarium in the Anti-partum unit to sit and eat.  My mom had bought me a lunch box so I could pack my lunch and not eat hospital food everyday.  So I sat and ate my peanut butter and Jelly sandwich and chips as I played Solitaire on my phone.  

When I got back to Nathan, it was almost time to do his 3 pm care.  These were my favorite moments of the day.  I loved touching my baby and taking care of him the best that I could.  At this care, they bumped his feeds up to 6 mL.  He was a growing boy and needed his nutrients.  He continued to have wet and poopy diapers and I loved that.  He had a diaper weight of 18 grams! Because he was pooping so well, his Bilirubin levels were way down and he didn’t need to be under the Bili-lights any more. He was doing things a normal healthy baby does and although it was something so tiny as my baby having full diapers, it meant the world to me.  If he was able to breathe on his own, I felt like he could come home with me and we could start our life together as a family.  I loved changing those tiny tiny diapers.  His bottom was so cute! J  This picture is one of my favorites of Nathan.  You can see how much blonde hair he had and just how ‘normal’ he looked.  If you didn’t know it, he looked like a normal sized full term baby.  But he was just a bit smaller.

When Kevin and I went to Target the day I got discharged, I wanted to pick up a few things to decorate Nathan’s incubator.  I got him a Christmas stocking and a “Baby’s 1^st Christmas” Ornament.  I wanted to make this the best Christmas that Nathan could possibly have.  Just because he was in the NICU didn’t mean that we couldn’t celebrate Christmas with him.

Nathan got a lot of things that day.  They gave him a Christmas Hat to wear for when he met Santa as well as a tux.  But that was way too big for him to wear so we just stuck with the Hat.  He looked so cute in it. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of him in his hat.  I wanted to document every single moment of Nathan, especially when Kevin was gone since he couldn’t see him himself.

Nathan in his Christmas hat

The 'tux' they gave him but was WAY too big.

It was around 5 pm and we heard the helicopter flying in.  Apparently, Santa was arriving by helicopter along with the Cincinnati Bearcat.  The Helicopter Pad was literally on the roof of the same building the NICU was in.  When we looked out the window next to Nathan, the Anti-partum unit was directly across the way.  So when we looked at the windows of Anti-partum, we could see the reflection of the roof and there definitely was a helicopter up there. 

We knew that Santa had a lot of babies to visit first so we just sat and waited for him.  Santa was holding babies and getting pictures taken, but I did not want some stranger dressed up as Santa, attempting to hold my baby and the nurses didn’t think that was a good idea either.  It’s not like he, or anyone for that matter, could just scoop Nathan up like a regular baby, otherwise I would be doing that all the time.  He was still very fragile and since Santa was holding all these other babies, we didn’t think it was a good idea for Santa to touch Nathan since his immune system was so weak at this point.  So we decided we would just open the sides of his incubator and get a picture that way.  I didn’t want to disturb Nathan just to get a good picture.

Around quarter to 6, Santa finally arrived to Nathan’s bedside! There was a photographer taking pictures as well as me snapping pictures at every chance I could.  Nathan’s nurse Kelly thought it would be OK for her to lift Nathan up a bit to get another picture.  I was watching his numbers on his monitor like crazy but he seemed to be handling it well..  Then I jumped in and got a picture with Santa and my son.  I wished Kevin were there to be a part of this moment.   Although I was hopeful for Nathan, I still wasn’t 100% positive Nathan would ever get another chance to meet Santa again so it would have been nice for his Dad to experience this moment as well.

After Santa left, we started his 6 pm care. He had 8 grams in his poopy diaper, which was awesome and he got another 6 mL of milk.  The love I have for this little boy is indescribable and I could not get enough of him.   

waiving to Dad

 

I left after his care since it was close to 7.  As I was leaving, I saw more of the Christmas party going on in the Family waiting room that was just outside the NICU doors.  Families were invited to this party so there were a lot of siblings that were there who had brothers or sisters in the NICU.  They got to meet Santa also and got their pictures taken with him.  It seemed like it was a nice distraction for families who were going through the same thing we were.  I really had no idea how good or bad other babies were in the other PODS.  I could just see how big they were compared to Nathan and I would assume that they would be fine and get to go home with their parents.  But I really had no idea of other babies’ issues.

I wasn’t at the RMH house long because I wanted to get back and spend the evening with Nathan.  I was just there long enough to eat some left overs and pump and then I was ready to go back. 

I spent about an hour to an hour and a half by my sweet boy that evening. I did his 9 o’clock care and then took off.  All was pretty calm with him so I just enjoyed spending as much time as I could with him.  I wanted him to know that his mama was there by his side and that I didn’t want to be anywhere else but with him.

Well, I got through my first day with it being just Nathan and I.  I lucked out in the fact that it was a pretty non-eventful day in terms of health issues with him.  But it was eventful with it being his 1 week Birthday and Nathan meeting Santa.  I bet Nathan was exhausted and was going to sleep really well that night.  Just one more day and a half to get through and he would see his dad again and I would get to see my husband.  I was missing him a lot.