NICU

The NICU has to be one of the most magical and saddest places on earth.  Max's stay thankfully was relatively short in NICU speak and he had very little in the way of interventions.  By the time I was regularly able to visit Max Josh had gotten to know the nurses and procedures much better then I did right at first. Daddy was the one that had changed him and knew that you had to weigh the diapers.  Daddy was the one to feed him first.  Josh had time to get into the routine of  being a NICU daddy before I had even been there.  It was odd as a mom to have the daddy telling you how to do everything the best way with the monitors on him.  Max had "cares" every 3 hours.  This was when he got his temperature taken, diaper changed (and weighed) and feed.  We started practicing breast feeding as soon as I felt up to it.  It was tricky for sure.  Sometimes he would do ok and sometimes he didn't even ever latch as first.  Then we would give him a bottle and finish by tubing what he couldn't get down.

I will never forget the first time we came to see him and he was dressed.  Before that he was wrapped in a swaddle type thing under a lamp.  When they dressed him the nurse gave him a little red hat that someone had knitted.  It even had a brim just like daddy's beanie.  It was the cutest thing.  That little hat will be one of my favorite keepsakes from when he was tiny.

We didn't know how long to expect Max to be in the NICU at first.  Even after I was discharged we were hoping that he wouldn't be far behind me but we didn't really know what all it would take to have him released to us.  We soon found out all the requirements.  The biggest thing that Max struggled with was taking all his feeding by mouth for a solid 48 hours.  So many times we would get so close.  We would leave at night thinking that we might get to bring him home with us the next day.  But the next day we would return to find that in the middle of the night they had to have his feeding tube put back in. 

Max being in the hospital also have us some time to get things ready for him at home.  We were in no way ready for him when he came.  We had to go shopping to get everything he would need.  We had a marathon shopping trip to Babies R Us.  We had to do some rearranging at the house along with some good cleaning.  So that by the time he came home we were as ready as we could be.

Having a baby in NICU was very educational.  We would be taught by the nurses almost every time we were there about something baby related.  It was stuff that every parent should know, not just preemie baby parents.  We also had to do CPR training and watch some videos.  In that regard we felt more prepared then if we just had had him at term.

After 9 days, Sunday August  28th Max came to stay.