Before Nash was born I thought I knew preemies. In fact having already had two babies in the NICU I thought I was seasoned and that this NICU stay would be a complete breeze. WOW was I wrong. There is really no way to describe having carried your baby around for in my case seven months and then suddenly have your baby ripped out of you and you can't do anything for the baby for weeks. It pretty much goes against all things of nature. I thought that I would handle it so much better this time around but.....Nash was so much earlier than the other two and was in for a much longer road than Ryder and Rhys. The best way to describe having to leave your baby at the hospital is having your heart ripped in two. I was so torn leaving the other boys at home and being with Nash who was over an hour away. It was so tough. Especially for Noah and Sawyer who seemed to know more of what was going on this time around. Being around Christmas there was a TON of activities that we were missing out on and plays and performances I couldn't make it too. Heartbreaking.
I finally got to hold Nash 5 days after he was born.
Meeting Noah and Ryder for the first time....
We got to stay at the Ronald McDonald house for a weekend. It was so nice to be together and close to Nash. Especially because I still couldn't drive to get down to San Diego...
The week before Christmas I had a conversation with a nurse who basically told me if I wanted my baby to come home by New Years I needed to be down at the hospital as much as possible. Nurses are great but they take care of 3 sometimes 4 high risk babies at a time. When a baby has a feeding tube like Nash did they tend to just hook them up to the tube feeding because lets face it.....it is easier and less work. So if we wanted Nash home I needed to get him to take all his feedings by bottle and gain weight. We are so blessed that we have so much family and friends who took amazing care of our kids so that I could be down at the hospital as much as possible those final days so I could get our baby home!
Santa visited the NICU....
Finally after three and a half weeks we got to take our sweet baby home on Christmas EVE. Talk about a miracle. Many of the nurses still couldn't believe how quickly he came home and how quickly he turned around. It felt like a dream walking out of that hospital with our baby it had been a long three weeks and we truly felt like we had received our little miracle.
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