NICU Warrior Wyatt

“After a very easy pregnancy, I started feeling off on Super Bowl Sunday at 30 weeks pregnant. A few days later on Valentine’s Day, I couldn’t feel my son moving around as much as usual. We decided to stop by the doctor on our way to our Valentine’s dinner convinced they would say I was being paranoid as a first time mom, but I wanted a doctor to see me before traveling out of state for my first baby shower the following weekend. Once at the maternity ER, they determined I was having contractions, my cervix was dilating and 90% effaced, and our son’s heart rate was dropping with each contraction. Conversations of emergency c-sections began, as did discussions of keeping me at the hospital until he was born. After 24 hours of monitoring, his heart rate calmed down and the conversations of emergency c-sections went away. Labor seemed to have stopped, so we were sent home for a few hours and asked to return the following morning. At the follow up visit, our son’s heart rate was great, but after another ultrasound and cervical exam it was apparent that he was very low and I was still dilating and completely effaced. Doctors told me they believed this was happening due to cervical insufficiency, something no one could have predicted until preterm labor began. We were sent back to labor and delivery and told we definitely would not be leaving the hospital until he was born, whether that was days or weeks away. A couple days later my water broke and our our son, Wyatt, was born 40 minutes later at 30 weeks 5 days on 2/18/23 at 3:10am weighing 3lb 15oz. Being at the hospital three days and nights leading up to his birth was ultimately a blessing, as he was able to get magnesium and steroid shots through me to help with his lung and brain development prior to birth. In the days before his arrival, everyone kept assuring us he would be okay and well taken care of, and they were right. However, what no one mentioned was how freaking difficult the NICU road into parenthood is.

Wyatt did wonderfully the first 20 days of life and remained off oxygen. All of the nurses kept calling him a “feed & grow” baby. On Monday, March 6th, the physical therapist was saying he looked so good we would likely get to go home early. However, on Tuesday, March 7th, I arrived at the NICU to the nurse practitioner telling me his head growth had jumped quite a bit very quickly, thus causing them to suspect excess cerebral spinal fluid on his brain. That Tuesday full of uncertainty was the worst day of my life. Wyatt was given a head ultrasound confirming larger brain ventricles and fluid, then sent to an MRI which confirmed he’d had a brain bleed at birth, but that it wasn’t still bleeding and didn’t appear to be blocking anything. He was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, but called an ‘outlier’, and a transfer to the Children’s hospital surgical NICU was initiated. Upon arriving at Children’s, Wyatt was put on oxygen and we were told if his head growth continued through the weekend, he would have brain surgery on Monday to install a shunt for the remainder of his life. I’m not sure my husband and I have cried more in our lives cumulatively than we did during that week/weekend while waiting to see what happened. At that point, we were able to move into the Ronald McDonald House across the street from the hospital to ensure we were close to our baby boy while we waited for whatever was coming next.

Miraculously, during his 20 day stay at Children’s, Wyatt’s head growth stabilized. Neurosurgery felt that no surgical intervention was needed in the immediate future, and he was able to come back off oxygen. We were overjoyed to be sent back to our original NICU and team of nurses, whom we adored, to continue working on the regular preemie checklist to get home: feeding from a bottle and gaining weight was our last thing to get down. After 6 days back with our dream team at UAB’s NICU, on April 5th, Wyatt was able to come home, just in time for Easter!

The transition home has gone well, but has exposed some of our trauma from our NICU stay a little more clearly. Hearing phantom monitors go off, being so anxious about him breathing that I’ll feel the need to hold him and stare at him through the night, stressing about how many ccs he eats at each feeding, worrying about his temperature, etc. However, with the support of our amazing family and fantastic pediatrician, we have finally started to hit our stride after a few weeks of being home. This week we also received news that neurosurgery no longer believes our son has hydrocephalus, and instead has benign fluid on the outside of his brain that shouldn’t impact him cognitively nor require surgical intervention. God is good!

During our NICU stay and through our transition home I would follow along with the little quotes and stories Project NICU would share. So many times I felt as though the words I couldn’t find were said by someone else there, and the feelings of grief for the pregnancy I expected versus got and guilt for not being able to carry my son to term that I couldn’t explain were validated. The NICU club is one I wouldn’t wish anyone to join, and I will take every sleepless night at home over a night in the hospital. However, I feel blessed to have extra time spent knowing our son on this side of the womb, I’m thankful for the incredible people who find their calling working with babies and families in the NICU, and I am grateful to platforms like Project NICU for helping me feel less alone as I walked through/am processing the toughest 46 days of my life as a NICU mama.” NICU mama, Lily