Our NICU Stay
For the next 15 days, the NICU at Texas Health Alliance became our home with rotating certified family members helping us welcome Michael Allen into the world. With Michael being born at 33 weeks and 5 days, we knew there was going to be a NICU stay for as long as 7 weeks. We thought we were mentally prepared for that. Turns out, you cannot mentally prepare to have your WHOLE life change while being stuck in a constant Groundhogs day.
During day 2, Michael came off his oxygen assistance, turns out getting two steroid shots in utero really helped his lungs! On day 3, we hit another milestone and it felt like we had a super baby who was able to breathe on his own, keep his temperature without assistance, and cuddle with mommy! We just knew that we would only be in the NICU for a week. We stayed at the hospital for three nights and then started the commute from Dallas to Fort Worth and back every day for the next the 12 days. Two hours in the car every day so we could spend a full 12 hours with our son while he was receiving treatment.
We would arrive every morning for his first feeding at about 7:45 am. Michael was feeding every three hours, 8, 11, 2, 5, rinse and repeat. We wanted to make sure that at a minimum he was being fed by us for the majority of his feeds. We did five out of the 8 feeds a day, because our wonderful nurses would tell us to leave and get some sleep. Had they not pushed us out of the NICU, we would have become permanent fixtures.
The last things Michael needed to cross off his to-do list was to conquer Suck, Swallow, Breathe. That doesn’t sound too hard, we do it every day! But for a 33 weeker, this felt like the hardest task he was ever going to have to do. We would make progress and he would take his bottles of donated breast milk, and then we would have a setback. Michael needed to eat about 50ml at each bottle, however, if he didn’t take the 50 ml via bottle, they put the rest in his feeding tube because he desperately needed those calories. We needed to get over 80% of calories consumed by the bottle to start our discharge orders.
At a week in, I started to notice that Michael was not tolerating his feeds anymore. See, the doctor added a fortifier to his meals to help him gain weight faster because he still wasn’t gaining weight as they wanted, and they added these nasty vitamins. The baby we were used to was no longer the baby that was here. He was in pain, colicky, and overall miserable. I could do nothing to comfort him. My heart started to break and it felt like the doctor wasn’t listening to me or Sam express our concerns.
The next day, we came into the physician's assistant telling us we were switching to formula because he stopped breathing that night. I wanted to hug her so bad! Sam and I knew something wasn’t right and although it took something scary happening to make a change, we were just happy a change was being made. After about a day without the fortifier, we had our baby back! Michael started to eat more and more from his bottles! We were back to groundhogs day.
Every day, the same routine, show up at 7:45, feed, cuddle, feed, leave for lunch at noon, feed, cuddle, nap, eat dinner, feed, cuddle, watch below deck, feed, cuddle, read bedtime stories, leave to head to Dallas at 10 pm. Approximately 38 meals out, 15 nights away from home, 15 days of not working out or really moving our body, and 15 days of extensive learning on how to being a parent to a preemie. On May 22nd, the doctor told us we could leave the next day!! We quickly packed bags, spent the night in the hospital, and waiting almost the whole Sunday to leave and bring our baby home! Finally!
