Elia comes home. After 18 days in the NICU, we are a family again. There is a saying amongst NICU grads, you never want to have to go to the NICU, but you are grateful for everything they do.
We are about to explain what happened at the NICU so that people can know that it is not so scary. It is important to trust the staff at the NICU and try not to predict when the baby will go home. The baby will go home when he or she is ready.
Elia was born at 35 weeks and 5 days, and was an IUGR (interuterine growth retardation – meaning she wasn’t growing as fast as we would like). Because Curie was also an IUGR baby, and had suffered in the womb, the decision was made to deliver early while Elia was still healthy.
At birth, she had a little grunting, which is a sign of respiratory distress. She was put on a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure, same as is used for apnea) machine for a day to help regulate her breathing. When her breathing stablized, she was put on a nasal cannula to get oxygen into her blood (day 2). She had a little trouble keeping her breathing, so they gave her a stimulant to help her – a dose of caffeine.
Amniotic fluid is usually pushed out during labor, but since she had a c-section they needed to put a tube in her mouth to suck out the fluid; at this point she was fed by umbilical catheter which puts nutrients directly into her belly. After a day or two she was put on an IV instead.
We were able to bottle feed her at the beginning but she kept getting tired. This was also normal for a 35 week and 5 day old baby. She did not know how to eat yet, so they intubated her and gavage fed her meaning they put a tube in her nose to her stomach and put the breast milk into her stomach. This would be the reason we stayed in NICU for so long – in fact we joked that why would she learn to eat if she could get milk pumped into her nose? She could continue until she was 18. Even with breast milk, infants need to be fortified with formula and vitamins at this age.
Elia was a little jaundiced on the first day so she was on a UV pad called a billi-blanket for a day. Curie was on it for several days. Babies have a terrible second night since they are out of the womb, we did not have to experience it because she was in the NICU. Babies also have terrible poo called merconium which is black and sticky, the nurses took care of it for us.
When Elia could temperature regulate she was taken out of the isolet and put into a crib. When she could start eating, we were officially out of the NICU and into a step-down room (ironically also in NICU). When she could take 8 feedings in a row without gavage, she was ready to go home. This does not happen gradually, one day she decided she was going to eat and we were sent home. She would have been 38 weeks and two days today.
Bottom line, trust the NICU (but don’t be afraid to stand up for yourselves there), don’t get your hopes up or the goal post will keep moving. Don’t be in a rush to get home, they can take care of her better there than you can at home. In fact we miss the monitors a little. 160 heart rate, 100% on the pulse oxymeter, an 85 over 50 blood pressure, and a 30 on the breathing. At a glance she is okay.
The hardest part was that visitors had to be over 12 so Curie couldn’t meet Elia until today. Instead she stayed in the cafeteria with her Grandmom or Poppop, or her aunt and uncle-to-be, or spent time with “her friends” our friends the Hoaglands. Thank you to all for keeping her company while we snuck in an hour or two a day with our new girl. Thank you for Emma, Raye, Anna, Ashley, Tino, Jim, Annalisa, Lischa, Julie, Haley – all the staff at Labor and Delivery, post-delivery, and NICU at Virginia Hospital Center. Thank you to Dr. Armstrong, Dr. McClaren (no matter how scary those visits were) and all of their colleagues and staff.
Albert’s birthday in the hospital, Christmas in the NICU, New Years going to the NICU, every day a visit to “the doctor” as Curie would call it. All the celebrations are smushed in a day, today, when we are a family again. If you have questions, ask us, we don’t know it all but having been in the NICU twice we can at least tell our story again and if that helps at all, then we are glad to do it again and again. We are lucky. We are grateful. We wish every parent and parent-to-be all the prayer and wishes for their children.
(There are cute pictures of Curie meeting Elia for the first time, we’ll get those out soon.)