A Womb With A View

After two weeks of stress and worry, it was nice to have a week of good news and joy.  Amanda came home Tuesday afternoon, and soon after I picked up Pearl (our dog) from our friend’s house, where she had been since Thursday.  As they say, there is no psychiatrist like a dog licking your face.  And there is no psychiatrist like your newborn daughter meeting and exceeding all expectations.  Lily has been doing exceptionally well in the NICU, taking most of her food, performing like a champ when being poked, prodded, measured, and changed, and doing her most important job she has right now: sleeping.  Some of her nurses have already described her as feisty and scrappy.  Her weight had dropped slightly over the first five days, as is expected with all newborns, but took a nice jump Friday morning to exceed her birth weight (2lbs, 6.3oz), and went up again today to 2lbs, 9.7oz.

 

Amanda and I have developed somewhat of a routine.  We try to get to the hospital in the morning and spend a few hours visiting.  Lily is in an isolette (the modern term for an incubator) most of the day, and they only like to handle her when they have to, around her feeding schedule.  When we are there for her feedings, one of us takes her temperature and changes her diaper.  Her diaper, by the way, would fit in my shirt pocket.  When the nurses are done doing whatever they have to do with her, one of us gets to do what they call Kangaroo Care.  They take her out of her isolette, unwrap her from her blankets, and lay her down on our bare chest, then cover her back up with a blanket.  Then we sleep, or at least she does.  We can do this for an hour or two, once or twice a day.  This practice was discovered by doctors in Colombia who ran out of incubators for their babies, and they found out that not only could the baby receive enough warmth from the mothers or fathers body, but there were additional benefits.  Laying skin-to-skin also helps stabilize the baby’s breathing and heartbeat.  When you can only have contact with your baby for a limited time each day, Kangaroo Care is like chicken soup for the soul, two hours goes by like five minutes.  The first time I had her on my chest and Manda asked me how it was, I believe my response was, “Better than cheesecake.”

 

We usually go home for a little while in the afternoon, rest for a few hours, and try to get back to see Lily after dinner sometime.  It’s a lot of back and forth, and can be tiresome, but we’re lucky to be relatively close to the hospital, 15-20 minutes in light traffic, or 30 minutes in heavy traffic.

 

Although I would never wish for anyone to have to deliver at 32 weeks, I have found a few silver linings the past week in the NICU.  Having your baby in an isolette, while at times scary, is a rare glimpse into the developmental process, and why I call it a Womb With A View.  She pretty much sleeps all day, but at times is very active, kicking and flailing around, yawning, making faces, staring at the walls at times, basically everything she would be doing in utero.  I consider it bonus time, since she can’t come home with us, but we still get to peek in on her.  We are getting excellent hands-on training from the nurses here, and I feel like I will be infinitely more prepared to care for her when she comes home than I would have been if she went full term. 

A Womb With A View

Lily through her "porthole"

As I sit here finishing this post, Lily is kangarooing with Amanda, and even though I’m just observing my wife and daughter lying skin-to-skin, bonding and nurturing each other, it’s still better than cheesecake. And I remind myself, don’t forget to breathe.

Lily and Mama-Roo