26 days in the NICU

Let me just start by saying the doctors, nurses and staff at CS Medical Center NICU are wonderful! Barrett, being born 7 weeks early, was not ready to eat on his own. You will see the feeding tube in his pictures below. During his 26 day stay, he also overcame jaundice and a horrible, horrible diaper rash that required his rear to be "on oxygen" and a prescription diaper rash cream. He was gavaged (tube fed) every 3 hours. Daddy went back to work to save his vacation for Barrett's homecoming and I immediately started my maternity leave. I was only in the hospital for 4 days and 3 nights but had a week and a half of hard recovery after his birth. I was not able to drive and stayed medicated on pain killers for a week. I toyed with the idea of going back to work and starting maternity leave once B came home, but I wasn't ready. So, for the next 26 days I was at the NICU at least twice a day for feedings and to bond with my newborn child and Daddy visited on his days off. While in NICU he lost weight and got down to 4lbs 13ozs however they told us this was normal for all babies. The weird thing about it was he was still the biggest baby in the NICU. My heart ached for some that were 1, 2 and 3 pounds - so, so tiny! He slowly started to gain weight, usually anwhere from an ounce to two ounces per day. Not supposed to be born yet, he slept most days and nights only waking for a few minutes at a time. This made learning to eat very difficult for him. The nurses kept telling us that in a blink of an eye, he would start eating and we would be heading home with him. They were absolutely right. Somewhere around day 15, we started trying to bottle feed him. Sometimes he had no interest and other times he would either take part or all of the bottle. All we needed for him to do was take all 8 bottles in a 24 hour period of time without gavaging. This part was very frustrating because we would think, oh this is awesome...then he would get lazy and be right back at what seemed square one. Day 20 came around and he took an entire bottle for me at both of the feedings where I visited, so the NP asked me to stay for a third feeding to see if he would take the bottle - and guess what, he did! I was so happy I started crying. The other parents and nurses in the room were so excited for us. Over the next couple of days they slowly started increasing the number of bottle feed attempts. We went from twice a day, to every other one, to every third one until day 23 when he took all the bottles on his own. Day 24 - feeding tube removed...then Day 25 - still took all bottles on his own...then Day 26 - we finally brought him home :) The NICU has a policy that during cold/flu/H1N1 season that only parents and grandparents are allowed to see the babies and it was limited to 1 guest at a time with a parent being in their at all times with a guest. This was hard for alot of family since they didn't get to meet him til he was almost 4 weeks old. Some did get to see him through the window. So, needless to say, everyone including us was so happy to have him home.

Here are a few more pics...

with my Dad; born on his birthday - with my Mom (my stepdad never came in the NICU) -
with my mother-in-law -

He was discharged from the NICU weighing a wonderful 6lbs, 3ozs. We were told he needed to see his pediatrican in 2-3 days so being discharged on a Friday we made that appointment for the following Monday at which he weighed 6lbs, 9oz and was 19.75 inches long. Growing good! To be continued...