#30DaysofBrave Day 13- Laura

My baby was born at 32 weeks 6 days. The traumas of that include: the moment the doctor and nurse realized I wasn't dramatic and was dilated 4cm, my husband not being able to be in triage with me because he was caring for our 3yo in the waiting room, talk of flying me to a bigger hospital to give birth, my baby being breech, my 3yo being present when my water broke, getting a COVID swab shoved up my nose while I was in active labor, the nurse yelling "I feel a foot!," another nurse saying "I'll get life support up here just in case," and being strapped to an operating table while having contractions every few seconds.

Yes, it's a long list. It was very traumatic 2.5 hours. But the most trauma was holding my little baby for 5 minutes before he was carted off to the NICU 1.5 hours away from me. The doctors were great about working with me to get me out by the next evening. I talked to the NICU nurses and my husband video called me.

When I got discharged, my husband picked me up and took me straight up to the hospital with my son. When I first saw him in his little box, it was surreal, scary, and heart breaking. They had a parent room for us to stay in and I insisted on being present for every care time around the clock. It was an amazing NICU!

Now I understand that my 5lb 2.5oz preemie who was breathing on his own was really never a high risk of not coming home, but for days, I couldn't even bring myself to ask. I still remember finally having that conversation with our nurse and her emphatic apologizing and saying, "It's so obvious to us, I never stopped to think that it wasn't obvious to you!"

The first time we left him was for a day and when we came back, they had added a feeding tube. I vividly remember watching him stop breathing while he ate and intensely watching the machine to make sure he got his heart rate back up. We were told that he wasn't going to be coming home for awhile. We realized we couldn't live at the NICU until he came home and finally had to leave him overnight. Then we realized driving 3 hours a day to see him was taking an even bigger toll on our mental and physical health and we couldn't sustain going daily. To top it off, we were told that one person could visit per day due to the increasing COVID cases.

For 33 days, I called the NICU every morning at 2am to hear how he was doing and make sure he didn't have any events. We spent most of our day, most every day listening to the beeping of the machines and praying he didn't brady. My husband drove for 3 hours a day, several of those days just to bring me up while he say in the car as I visited our son.

The day he got to come home was wonderful and scary. No more monitors and machines. No more medical professionals to keep him breathing.

He's doing great and I realize that we are fortunate! I try really hard to be a support to the community of NICU parents who have and are going through their own unique, wonderful, terrifying, exciting, taxing NICU journey.