By nature I am a very private person. I always have been. I find no pleasure, satisfaction, or desire to share my life story. Maybe it just didn't have enough importance until now. But that being said, it is very hard for me in general to discuss personal matters, but Colt takes it to an entire different level. As a general rule, we do not discuss Colt's medical information and we will probably continue that because I feel as though it keeps his life from revolving around it and allows him to be a normal kid (and keeps us from reliving it over and over). So when describing our NICU stays I won't necessarily be talking about tons of medical issues (everyone's medical issues are specific to them anyways), but more so about our experience from a mother's perspective - my perspective.
I was in the hospital for 3 1/2 days before Colt was born. My water ruptured prematurely and I was put on magnesium (probably the closest to death I will ever feel here on this earth) to stop my contractions long enough so that I was able to have two steroid shots to develop his lungs. Thank God this worked. When Colt was born he was wailing, which was literally the best noise that I have ever heard in my life. Not being able to hold your baby when they are born is devastating to say the least, but this offered my heart the peace that it needed to get through that time. He was 29 weeks - 11 weeks way too early. So we knew that we would be spending time in the NICU before coming home. But we were not prepared for what laid ahead - no one can be.
The first NICU we were in was the one at our local community hospital. They were phenomenal to say the least. Due to being premature, Colt had to be checked on and fed every 3 hours. Miraculously, Colt has been able to breathe on his own since day one, so he was considered a feed and grow baby. He was inside an incubator almost our entire stay at our home hospital, which meant I was only able to hold him for about an hour a day. The guilt you feel as a mom when you have to leave during times the NICU is closed or to get a few hours rest makes resting almost next to impossible. I spent so much time there that the nurses and doctors ended up becoming a second family to us. Little did we know how much of a blessing they would be to us in the next several weeks. They taught me so much and made me feel comfortable with the equipment and all the monitors that Colt was hooked up too. By the end of our 21 day stay here they had taught us how to hook up Colt's food in his feeding tube, how to unhook him to take him out of the bed to hold and how to hook him back up correctly, and even how to know when the monitor is blaring a false reading. This happens more often than you will care to realize, but this sure gave me a lot of peace when the alarms were blaring and I was able to quickly determine it was incorrect due to something as simple as a sticky pad being hooked to his gown instead of his chest. The NICU staff was so accommodating to me and ended up being our first stepping stone in Colt's journey. I am forever indebted to their graciousness and patience with me and pray blessings on them and their families. We spent some of our most precious moments with Colt's NICU family. We were blessed by God and able to stay in our local hospital that year through Colt's first Christmas and New Year. Being in the hospital for the holidays was hard, but it was still so joyous and we made some of my most favorite memories.
I was discharged 2 days after delivery. I am not going to sugarcoat it. I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest and my anxiety was through the roof. It was hard enough being just steps down the hall away from him, but going home made the situation we were in even more real. Then on day 8, I was sitting in the NICU holding Colt with my sister, when I received heart breaking news from the doctor on call that day. My husband had started a new job just a month before Colt's unexpected arrival, so he went back to save some time off for when Colt was able to come home. During the early morning hours they had performed a routine ultra sound on Colt's head. They do this on any child born before 34 weeks. No one expected what was found. Colt ended up being diagnosed with a Grade IV IVH (brain bleed) on the left side of his brain. Helpless, desperate, and broken does not even begin to describe the magnitude of emotions I felt in that moment. Doctors are taught to give the worst case prognosis in any instance, basically to allow people to fully grasp what the total outcome could possibly be, but I was not ready for it that day. I couldn't comprehend it. And the tears flowed. Watching your baby being taken from his mother way too early, struggling to do little things like maintain his body temp, and not even knowing how to drink milk yet was a huge undertaking, but then to get news like this literally stops your life in its tracks. Day 8 is the day we learned that our life would be taking a completely different path. God has been with us every step of the way, but on this day he threw me for another loop and taught me once again how in control he is and how precious our time on this earth truly is. Colt was stable - his bleed was no longer active - which allowed us to stay at our local NICU much longer. They monitored him daily and kept a record of his head size. Once his head began swelling we were moved to a much larger hospital in a big city about an hour from our home. That's where the second part of our journey began...
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