Together

What an amazing day - after 3 weeks in the NICU we finally got to hold our baby!  Well, I did while Daddy watched, talked to him, and took some pictures.  We were both hesitant to try unless everyone assured us it would be good for Ben, because he just doesn't handle any disturbance very well, but he did beautifully.  He slept on my chest skin-to-skin for over 2 hours today and had fewer alarms going off than he usually does in his incubator and his temperature stayed steady.  It was as if Ben remembered how comforting it was to be with mom and he relaxed and seemed to enjoy it, which raised my spirits tremendously.  It was the first time we got to be together as a little family without any barriers between us and it was good for all of us.

 

At the same time, we witnessed a priest praying over another baby just a few beds down that was having serious problems.  We had talked to her parents several times and it was really heartbreaking to see their 3-day old baby (whose start in life was very similar to Ben's) taking a turn for the worse.  We are parying that we find her doing much better when we go back tomorrow.  It reminded us of how fragile all of these babies are and how grateful we should be for every good day they have.

Overall, Ben had a very good third week with the exception of his lungs.  They are just very immature and struggling to keep up with his needs but we hope that given time they'll catch up and be fully functional.  As long as Ben remains stable and keeps gaining weight (he's already up to 2 lbs, 2 ounces) his lungs should have a chance to improve.  Maybe hanging out with his mom and dad will help, too!

Thank you all for your encouraging messages and emails.  We didn't realize that so many people had been sending emails to Matt's account linked to this webpage, so please forgive us for taking so long to respond!  Matt hasn't checked it frequently in the past and we found quite a few messages yesterday that date back to Ben's birthday.  We'll be better about corresponding from now on :)