1400 Days Ago

Thanks to the brilliant, but scary, mind of a friend, I learned that my boy is 1400 days old today. Incredible. That's a lot of days.

Here he is still in utero - probably 1401 days ago. That's almost-big-sister Katherine talking to him through my huge belly. I can hear her now, "Come out of there little brother!"

We had scheduled a C-section at 36 weeks due to some complications so we headed to the hospital about mid-morning, and waited. Getting the IV inserted was absolutely the most physically painful part of the entire process. They took me in and took him out, played show & tell, and then took him away to the nursery. Later, when I woke up and made it up to the room I was told that he was in an oxygen tent. OK, no problem. We had figured he might need a little juice - after all, he was a month early at this point.

An hour or two later the doctors came in and told us that they were going to transfer him to UVA hospital because he needed to be on a C-pap for more oxygen. They wheeled me down to the nursery just in time to see him, and touch his back, before the team of baby-transfer-nurses came to take him away. Then came pain worse than ever - heart wrenching. Worse still when Morgan found out they were going to take him. She cried, "No! Don't let them take him. Don't let them break up our family!" David went with the transfer team to UVA, I stayed at MJH, and the grandmothers took the girls home. I've never felt so alone in my life.

Here he is on day #3 - this is one of the pictures that one of the UVA nurses took to send back to me at MJH. The one for me actually had his face clear, but this one was for the girls...probably to show them what he looked like before they saw him in the NICU. This is the C-Pap. He had that for a day or two and then was intubated. No one could understand why our boy was even there or why he needed oxygen - he was a good size (7lbs 10 oz a whole month early!) - huge in relation to most NICU residents. Still, he was a sick baby and needed to be there.

Later that day they intubated him which kept him from working too hard to breathe. David continued to stay with Will every night and would visit me here and there. I was released the next day and we were able to stop by to see Will before David took me home. This picture of David & the girls visiting Will was taken before I came home. You know he could just feel their love!

This is quite a shock for someone just out of the hospital, still on drugs, an hopelessly heartsick over not being able to hold her baby for 4 days (it would be another day before I would be able to hold him and only then because a male nurse orchestrated a bed change while we were there!) I can't remember how long he was intubated, but before too, too long they had him in a tent, and then on a cannula. He was also hooked up to feeding tube until a day or two before he came home, when he was able to get enough nutrients in a more traditional way! That was the last hoop he had to jump through in order to come home - lose the feeding tube.

In total, Will spent 40 nights in the NICU. David stayed with him every single one of those nights. He'd help me get the girls down and then he'd head into the hospital and sit with the boy, holding him when could, feeding him when he could, talking to him constantly, and loving him.

We were lucky. We were lucky to live so close to UVA hospital. My heart went out to all the parents from far away who had to leave their other children at home with relatives, and who had to stay in hotels or Ronald McDonald houses in order to be with their sick babies.We were lucky to bring him home. I'll never forget the day I went in to be with him, and was face-to-face with the nurses wheeling a box out of the NICU - behind them were the parents. We were lucky to bring Will home as soon as we did. Though it was a much longer stay than anyone anticipated, it was shorter than a lot of those babies in there. We were lucky that he came off the oxygen as soon as he did. Everyone said we could expect him to need it through at least January. We had him weaned by the end of August.

We were impatient to get him home. Living in the NICU is disruptive and not conducive to loving a baby sufficiently. The nurses are wonderful, but it's not home and it's not family. The interruptions were unbearable. The tests were endless. The worry heightened as time went on with no answers. In the end, after all the worry, and and BPD diagnosis, Will came home.

We were also extremely fortunate to have a wonderful and supportive family nearby, not only our own families, but our church family too. Not a day went by that someone didn't offer to bring food, watch the kids, or even come and hold Will. Our neighbor is a NICU nurse and we knew she was checking on him. Many of our friends work at UVA and they stopped by to see him. We were on prayer chains all over the country. Our pastor came to see us, but also came the nurses told us, just to be with Will. We brought him home on a Sunday after church. At the end of the service our pastor presented me with 6 beautiful red roses - one for each week. It was a joyous day that next Sunday when we brought him to church for the first time. We could not have gotten through that experience as well as we were able without our unwavering faith in God and knowing that He is the source of all strength.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Philippians 4:13