NICU

Many of you may already know that Sophia spent some time in the NICU 

after she was born. It was really rough and I didn't want to post a lot about it because is was a stressful and personal time in our lives. Now that she is home and doing really good, I thought that I would write down our experience.

For all those pregnant women out there hoping that their baby comes early... I hope that baby stays put until the due date. I hope that no one has to go through having a baby in the NICU.

       Sophia was born 12/23 and she was six weeks early, after she was born we

 got to hold her for about 10 minutes and then they rushed her off to the NICU. When I was being wheeled into the recovery room they wheeled me through the NICU so I could see her again, it was great and at the same time not so great. It was not something I was really ready for to see her connected to all these 

monitors, and have an IV in her.

Lucky she didn't need any help breathing, she was doing that all on her own!

                         I couldn't walk the rest of the night so I didn't see her again until the morning. In the morning we had plans to go see her when we woke up, but by then the NICU put her on an eating schedule and asked us to please wait until her next feeding at 11am. It was difficult not to be able to go see our baby girl when ever we wanted.

 They have what they call "Cluster Care" they did it every 3 hours and its when they would feed, change, and hold the babies. Sophia's schedule was 8, 11, 2, 5 and so on. They recommend that we come at those times to hold and feed her.

                       When we went in to see her, she had an IV in her head and was under a heat lamp, and had wires all over the place. It was really difficult to hold her without feeling like we were pulling on wires and hurting her. We were able to feed her and hold her for an hour and than we had to say good-bye for and couple of hours. 

I can't not tell you how miserable it was to see our baby hooked up, I think about it and I still cry. 

The next 2 weeks where the most emotionally draining weeks of my life so far. I would call the NICU all the time and ask how she was doing, how much she eat before they had to put it in the tube that was in her nose. 

Seeing her while we were still in the hospital was hard but it was easy because we were still there and she was just a walk down the hall. 

I got discharged Christmas day and that was one of the hardest days of my life, I had her with my for 8 months and there is nothing like finally having her in my arms, and then having to put her down and leave her. I went to the hospital with her, and I left without her. This is not what I had planned, I didn't have time to prepare myself for how hard this experience would be.

Sorry I will have to finish this another time, Sophia is hungry!