On the 23rd of March, while working from home, I received a call from my wife. At this point she was 27 weeks pregnant and her preeclampsia had shown signs but nothing major. This call sucked the life out of me. Her blood pressure had spiked and she was seeing stars. I dropped what I was doing and drove as fast as I could from our house to her work to get her to the hospital. When we arrived, the nurses and doctors couldn’t give us any answers except that we may be meeting our daughter that day. We were terrified to say the least. After three days we were discharged and sent home.
One less than peaceful night of sleep later, we were back on our way to the hospital. Nikki could not breathe at all that night and we knew something was wrong. After 5 hours (felt like 60) we found out the pneumonia had set in. Again, another 4 day stay and we were discharged for yet another sleepless night.
This is where the story gets fun. We head back to the hospital, at this point the nurses know our life story and even stop by the room to ask why we are back. A day later, we are told that we are going to be residence of the beautiful Memorial Resort until Charlotte makes her appearance. The doctor schedules all of the ultrasounds and monitoring to make sure that Charlotte is doing ok. We stayed our course and tried to keep her baking for as long as possible.
On the morning of April 5th, 2022 I had a gut feeling that I needed to head to the hospital first thing in the morning. God had decided that it was time for our baby to make her appearance. Over night a 5cm hemorrhage had appeared on the placenta and Charlottes vitals began to fluctuate. Moments after I walked into the room, our doctor came in to break the news that Nikki would be heading to the Operating Room for her C-section in just a couple hours.
Charlotte made her grand entrance to Hotel California by the Eagles and the first time she saw her dads face, she began to cry.
If I told you that was the most stressful time in her short life, I would be lying to you. Any NICU stay is more stressful and difficult than anyone could realize. She was 10 weeks early and was only 3 pounds. Since then, she has beat every obstacle out in front of her by the Grace of God. It began with her getting off of oxygen and then her being put on room air so we could hold her longer than one hour a day. Those all went rather quickly l, but since birth she has struggled with eating. She simply has no draw to the bottle and will take usually about half of her bottle before just giving up.
As of this upcoming Thursday, she will be 40 weeks. This is why we have began to worry. If she does not take her bottle then the only option is to send her home with a G-Tube. This brings me more stress than anything so far. I do not want my little girl to have surgery to implant a feeding tube into her stomach. It breaks my heart to think it may be the only option.
Being a Dad is the best thing that has every happened to me and I have learned more in the past two months about myself than I have known in the past 25 years of my life. Charlotte has me wrapped around her little finger and she could probably make a grunt that sounds like “corvette” and I would go drain my savings to get it for her, right now.
This is a recap of where we are. While it may sound sad, I know that my daughter is in the best care possible and will get through this. Please keep her and our family in your prayers as two months in the NICU wears on the nerves of everyone, even a baby.
Kangaroo Care - NICU from a Dad’s Perspective 