A Day in the Life of NICU

Some of you may be wondering what it is like to have a baby in NICU. So I thought I would try to relate the realities of that experience. From the moment Caden was born, he was given an IV to “nourish” him with sugar water since he wasn't allowed to nurse. In addition, there are monitors/tubes/wires attached to him monitor respirations, blood pressure, pulse, etc. Then, once he was diagnosed with having the coarc, he was given a central line in through his belly button to give medication as well as TPN, “food” for him. So, at any given time, he has seven or eight (maybe more) tubes or wires connecting him to various pieces of equipment. And, in addition to that, he is currently undergoing phototherapy for his jaundice so he has to wear sunglasses to protect his eyes. And, this is with him doing well and being fairly stable! In addition to all this, because of the medication he is not very alert. He sleeps the majority of the time. Every once in awhile he will open his eyes for a minute or two and look around, but otherwise, he keeps them closed.

If we want to hold him, it can take several minutes for the nurse to turn off the light, take off the sunglasses, move all the necessary equipment close enough to one side of the bed so all the tubes and wires reach where we'll be sitting. Then she carefully picks him up, making sure not to pull on or remove any of the wires and transfers him to our arms. We get to hold him, but it's certainly not like being able to hold and love on a baby like we should be able to. We have to be so careful of everything attached to him, so it makes it a little impersonal. Then, when it's time to put him back in his bed, it's a reversal of all the above steps, sometimes taking the nurse longer to get everything back in order. Certainly not able to just go in and pick up your baby and snuggle them like we should be able to.

Anyway, we know he is in good hands and we are grateful for that. However, we are sad that we aren't able to love on him as we would like to. It's a challenging experience to say the least. But we are dealing with it the best we can. As a mother, it's awfully hard to not be able to pick up your baby whenever you want to. But when we are with him, we try to touch his skin as much as possible, whether it is caressing his arms and legs or stroking his chest. We talk to him as much as we can and Greg reads to him a lot. We want him to feel our presence and hear our voices since we can't connect with him as God intended.