The Miracle of Ordinary Days - Part 9



This is Abby at three days old.  See how small her head is?

You can see the size of my fingers against the size of her legs.




Abby at 3 days old.  I am applying some shiny moisturizer to her skin to help keep it protected.

The first days after I came home were difficult for me but Abby was doing well.  Luckily, the nurses at the hospital were always there so that if I wanted to check on Abby, even in the middle of the night, I could call her nurse and see how she was doing.  Calling and finding out she was doing well made me sleep better.  The nurses offered such vigilant, constant care that I knew that everything that should be done was being done.  It did a lot to help ease my troubled heart. 

The Relief Society in the ward arranged rides for me because I could not drive myself to the hospital.  The sisters were amazing.  Many of them had fasted and prayed with us for Abby and it was comforting to know that people wanted to help us.  It was hard to share in the experience at the time because so much of what we were going through was hard to explain.  These were the days before we owned a digital camera so all of our pictures were on our camera.    The one picture we had of Abby was taken right after she was born and the few people that we had shown it to were obviously concerned by her small size.   It seemed better just to give people updates as they asked for them and not to give too many details.  The details were overwhelming to us also so it was better just to say, she is doing well for her size.  I suppose this should have been scarier but it really wasn't like that for us.  That peace we felt was constant.

The first day after returning home was a memorable one for me.  I visited Abby that morning and did her care time.  I was still worried about her but she was making progress.  She graduated that day to another ventilator  for more "advanced" babies.  I saw Dr. Johnson in the hall and gave her the update.  She was happy to hear of Abby's progress.  I remember that I cried a lot that day.  Post pregnancy hormones and worry are apt to make any girl weep. 

I watched other people walk around the hospital like it was just another day.  When someone you love is sick or in the hospital in critical condition life slows down dramatically.  I feels almost like an affront that the rest of the world moves forward at a steady pace.  I remember having the urge to yell at people walking by and saying, "Don't you know my baby is in the hospital?"  I sat in the chapel in the main part of the hospital and cried and prayed.  I bought Abby a little sheep that could sit at her bedside to watch over her while I wasn't there.  Later that night Aaron purchased a Husky bear for her so that she would have something from him also.  

Abby's condition didn't change much in the days that followed.  She was growing little by little although extremely slowly.  She would get little infections and be given antibiotics to treat it.  We had one anxious night when she had a small bleed in her brain but after another blessing, that resolved itself quickly.  She was amazing to watch.  It was amazing to watch her change.  She was not like a baby that was full grown.  We were able to watch her change and grow before our eyes. 

My days were spent in the hospital.  I would get there for her early care time and stay through the day to be there for as many care times as I could.  In the early days, she had care times every three hours.  I would go home in the afternoon and Aaron and I would usually return for the feeding at night.  Aaron was there every time he could get away from school and work.  My other main job was to pump breast milk for Abby.  She was not able to eat it at the time and wouldn't be able to take a bottle or breastfeed until she was off the ventilator but I needed to keep my milk supply going so that she could have it when she needed it. 

I felt glad to have something to do for her because I was not able to care for her full-time.  I was careful to store my milk in the freezer and had a good supply for her waiting to be used.  I was supplied a pump for home use and pumped every few hours.  There was also a private room for it outside of the NICU.  Anyone who has done this for any length of time knows how draining it can be (forgive the pun).  It was hard to keep up with, especially during the night.  It was at those times that I missed Abby the most and wondered how much different it would be to have a baby born on time where you would have a little one to nurse instead of meeting up with the breast pump. 

The days in the hospital were greatly helped by getting to know other moms that were in the same situation.  Each room shared a care time so there were several moms that were there with me at the same time and waiting in the waiting room.  A few days after Abby was born a little girl joined her in the room that was born at just 24 weeks gestation.  She weighed in at 1 pound 7 ounces.  Her parents visited her regularly and I got to know her mom, Shannon very well.  We kept up on the latest status updates of our babies and I think it helped me a great deal to have someone to talk to who was going through the same thing. 

After a few days the umbilical line was taken out and instead Abby had an IV line placed in her arm.  One of the difficult things in babies so tiny is that it is hard to access their veins and the ones that are accessible collapse easily and must be changed often.  This is a fact of the NICU and of the kind of care she needed.  The only time this was upsetting was the day when I came in the room to find that she had an IV in the top of her head.  I was not prepared to see it and I burst into tears.  I left the room for a minute to compose myself and when I returned the nurse explained that it was the only accessible place she had that day and that she was sorry that it upset me.   I learned early on that I needed to be prepared for anything when it came to her care but that was a shock to me. 

The support of the ward continued and I was grateful to have good friends there.  My visiting teachers were particularly helpful at this time.  Jennifer Leeds and Beth Child had come to the ward at the same time that we had and we became fast friends.  They came to see me in the hospital before Abby was born and brought games to play.  Jenn helped me clean my house when I was on bed rest.  Beth had gone through the NICU experience the year before with her son Elijah and knew first hand the experience that I faced.  It was great to have someone there who understood even if we didn't talk about it all the time.  It was comforting to know that they were there and I was grateful for their friendship.  I felt that our Relief Society President was inspired to make them my visiting teachers at that time.  They were definitely the right sisters at the right time for me and I will always remember them fondly for the service and friendship that they gave to me at that time.

One particularly sweet memory of this time was a conversation that I had with a dear older sister in my ward.  She stopped me in the hall one Sunday to ask me how Abby was doing.  When I told her that she was doing well, she told me that she was so glad.  She had been praying for us and for her.  She then shared an experience that amazed and humbled me.  She told me of her own little son that had been born too early.  In those days no intervention was done.  He weighed just over one pound.  She had held him while he died in her arms.  We both shed tears as she talked about him and I told her how grateful I was that she had told me about him.  She said that she was glad that Abby had a chance to live and that she missed her little boy.  Fifty years later his memory brought tears to his mother's eyes.  Later that night I remember sitting with Abby and thinking of this sweet friend and so many other moms over the centuries that have had to let their little ones go when they were born too young and I felt grateful to live in a time when Abby could be saved.