Yay! Keeping my fingers crossed for a very safe, very boring delivery and childhood.
One of the nurses working with WhyBaby was herself about 20 weeks pregnant with her first when we were admitted. It was especially grueling for her, caring for 600 grammers while knowing everything that could go wrong, and knowing the little one inside her was subject to just the same whims of fate. One day she reached just the same stage WhyBaby was born at, and came in looking pale and so stressed. She told me the schedule she’d worked that week (over 50 hours!) but she couldn’t find anyone to cover for her. She quietly confessed that her back hurt and she had felt a few belly pains and was worried about pre-term labor. Quicker than snot, I was marching into the Charge Nurse’s station and demanded that the poor woman be sent home to put her feet up. She was. And had a healthy full-term baby much later. Who was so much bigger than all the babies she cared for, she thought he looked weird!
My twins were 8 weeks early, and spent five weeks in the NICU, just putting on weight and working past apnea.
My youngest son was just four weeks early, and a strapping 6 pounds when born. They were going to let him come home right off, but he had high bilirubin, a fractured collarbone from delivery, and necrotizing enterocolitis. They had to pull him off of food entirely for several days until the inflammation in his intestines went away. Luckily, it did. He came home two and a half weeks after being born.
All of the kids are healthy now, with no apparant long term problems. The doctors and especially nurses of the NICU are largely responsible for this happy outcome.
Sometimes, we take the kids to the NICU so the folks there can see how well the kids are doing, and how they’ve grown. It always seems to make their day.
My daughter was in the Albany Med Neonatal Intensive Care when she was born. She actually was the healthiest baby there – normal weight, just anemic, and a transfusion fixed that right up. She was released after only a couple of days.
I remember how tiny the others were. Some were only 2-3 pounds and very fragile, but it looked like everyone at the time was doing OK.
I thought of this thread when I read this article. Can you imagine what those parents who had to evacuate and leave behind their babies in the NICU must have felt?
