November is Prematurity Awareness Month. RiverDog Prints supports one cause or charity a month and this one rests very close to home. I will be posting once a week in November, retelling my story of prematurity. I warn you before you read that some details are a bit graphic and personal, but anyone who has gone through this experience will know, that the details count for so much. You can support the March of Dimes by clicking the banner below, but first, read on for part five, the final installment of my personal preemie story.
Near the end of Eli’s stay in the NICU, we would get a call from his nurse early in the morning saying that if Eli made another few hours without any apnea, he would come home that day. He would them have an episode and have to stay for another few days. This happened at least three separate times and I have to say was the most repeated nerve-wracking experience we had in those 89 days. Finally, the day arrived on September 24, 2005.
We had talked about taking a monitor with us, but we all decided that Eli was ready to live without beeps and alarms. We had his medications and tiny syringes, all my frozen liquid gold (breast milk), his milk fortifier, rice cereal and all the little nipples and bottle we could pack. And tiny Eli.
My maternity leave was almost up and I had about a week to settle our whole family into a new routine before I headed back to my 3-day a week job. With RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) season right around the corner, we decided to sequester Eli in our house until April. I don’t think people understood why we were being so cautious, but nowadays, with H1N1, I think they might understand a bit better. We arranged for the group of doulas that we had used for my first son’s birth to come two days a week and my husband would cover the other day.
When preemies come home from the NICU, they are used to constant and scheduled attention. There is no “hey, my baby is sleeping through the night at 2 months” joy. Eli slept in 45-minute stretches during the day and not much better at night. I cried quite a bit from pure exhaustion and the constant worry of whether he would thrive.
We fed him as well as we could. Eli had reflux, common among preemies, but not exclusive to them. The additional challenge to the reflux was getting Eli to suck hard enough to ingest enough nutrition. As with many things, this natural motion was underdeveloped. We needed to squeeze his cheeks, support his chin, hold the bottle and him all at once. It could be an Olympic event. After struggling to get the food into Eli, we would hope that we had the right combination of medicine, rice cereal and holding him upright, to keep the food down. We all got better at this as time wore on.
As in the NICU, Eli graduated from every challenge at home, one by one, and became more and more of a healthy baby. He was so strong that most of his physical developments came earlier than his brother’s. His simple determination had served him well in so many ways. It has not been “easy street,” but I’ve read so many accounts of other preemies who have not thrived as Eli has. We count ourselves blessed and lucky. He is a miracle born from many helpful, skilled and loving hands.
I hope I’ve succeeded in raising your awareness of prematurity this month. Sadly, our story is not unique, but the outcome is the best it can be. I’ll leave you with our current picture that we take every year on the front step, just as the one above. And with Eli singing a song he learned at school. Thanks for reading our story.
