David's Story Part 5

Today is the day I've been dreaming of since the day I looked down at the test with the two pink lines.  That moment that you expect to happen minutes after your child is born, not 4 days later.  But given the long and grueling wait, watching your tiny little child struggle to breathe on his own, this moment of holding him against your chest for the first time is just more precious than ever.  It's hard to describe the feelings I felt.  Just pure joy.

First time with my little guy

A little snuggler

He was still connected to tons of cords and tubes, but it didn't make the experience any less amazing.  He just laid there contently for about half an hour on my chest.  I didn't want the moment to end.  The next day, we would be going home.  It's a terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach when you have to leave the hospital without your baby.  We knew he was in good hands though and we would be up to visit every day until he was able to come home.

Friday we left bright and early and went to go get our other not so little bundle Emily!!  Boy did I miss her.  I hadn't seen her since Sunday night when we dropped her off at her grandparents house.  She did awesome with them and had a wonderful time.

Emily having a blast with grandpa

 

Emily was a bit uncertain when we got her.  She wasn't upset of course, I think she was just confused on what was going on and why she was away from us for so long.  It was a strange quiet ride home.  But when we got home, she was back to her silly self.

Emily is going home!

She missed her daddy

We went back to the hospital later to see David get his very first bath!  We brought Emily with us, but she was pretty freaked out by the whole hospital setting, so her and daddy hung out in the lounge, while I was with David.

Not a fan of the bath

Is it over yet?

All clean!

 The weekend was a blur, but we got to come up once a day to see our David.  We took shifts since Emily was with us and just spent some time holding him and cuddling up.  This was daddy's first time holding his son.

First time holding David

Happy dad

Sometimes when we went up there he would be under the bili-lights, so we could just sit with him.  How adorable are those darn shades.  I totally stole a pair to keep in the baby box.  They just crack me up!

Those cool shades

More cuddles

Can't wait to bring this guy home

Finally, on Monday, June 11th we got word that David would be soon able to come home.  His levels were all stabling and they just needed to run a few more tests to be sure he was ready for home.  They do a carseat test to make sure his breathing is steady in an upright position - he's been on his back since day one.  The one thing still holding him back was his bilirubin levels.  Tuesday rolled around and his levels were still a tad high.  They asked if we still wanted to bring him home and hope the levels start to taper, or if they would like us to keep him under the lights for another full day.  Well, I didn't want to go through the hassle of renting a light blanket like we had to with Emily, so we opted to keep him for another full day of light therapy.  We knew that would be the best plan of attack as hard as it was to say keep him another day.

Finally, the final chapter up next - David is coming HOME!

David's Story Part 4

The next morning (Tuesday, June 5th) I got to have my first real meal.  The hospital food wasn’t all that bad.  It’s relatively hard to screw up breakfast.  I had pancakes, hashbrowns and bacon.  It was pretty darn good.  I still had an IV in, still had a catheter in and was still pretty much bed bound.  I would be able to get those both removed soon.  David was doing well on the CPAP machine overnight which we were very thankful about.  However, later that night, they determined he still wasn’t getting the oxygen he needed.  They now wanted to intubate him (put a tube down his throat) and administer a synthetic surfactant to help coat and expand his lungs.  When we are born, we are supposed to produce surfactant naturally to help our lungs expand to breathe.  Since David was born early, his lungs didn’t quite develop enough on their own.  Since the oxygen and CPAP were not doing the trick to get him breathing without assistance, we knew this was the only way that things were going to progress. Also at this time, I was given a breast pump in my room to see if I could start getting things going there.

The procedure was quick and flawless on Wednesday afternoon.  They put him back on CPAP briefly afterwards until they could see the results of the surfactant starting to work.  They slowly lowered the amount of oxygen he was getting to see how he would do on his own.  He was starting to show a lot of improvement!  I also got to give him a few drops of breast milk on my finger.  It was such a sweet moment for me.

Around 2:00pm he was taken off CPAP and just had a little oxygen cannula placed under his nose!!  At this point, however, his jaundice levels had risen so he was given some of that great bright blue light therapy to help with that.

As for Jim and I, all we could do was sit and wait.  We would go across and visit a couple times a day - usually right after a pumping session so I could drop off any milk to the nurses.  It was only a few drops, but they took whatever I could give.

Meanwhile, Emily was having a blast with her grandparents.  On Tuesday she got to take a trip to the zoo with her cousins.  I missed her so much, but we knew it was best that she didn’t come up to see us at the hospital.  She totally wouldn’t understand what was going on, and if she had to leave us, she would most likely have a meltdown.  We were kept on constant update with phone calls and pictures.

Thursday, June 7th started like every other day.  Stop by and visit, go back to the room sitting and waiting.  That afternoon we got some great news - I would FINALLY get to hold him for the first time!  Four long days of waiting, I could not wait!

Mmm....real food!

CPAP machine

Emily and her cousin at the zoo!

Looking for polar bears

Having a great time

No more CPAP!

Sweet little face

Daddy with David

Haha, sporting some shades when they turned on the overhead light therapy