Maksim finds me there at 2:00 AM, as he does most nights.
"You should sleep," he says, not for the first time.
"I can't. What if something happens while I'm gone?"
"The nurses will alert us immediately. You know that."
"I know. But—" My voice breaks. "He's so small. So fragile. If I'm not here, if he needs me—"
Maksim pulls a second chair beside mine. "Then I'll stay too. We'll both be here."
We sit together in the NICU, watching our son breathe with mechanical assistance, both of us exhausted and terrified and desperately hopeful.
Week 4 (April 15th):
The ventilator comes out.
After four weeks of mechanical breathing, Nikolai is strong enough to breathe on his own. Not perfectly—he still needs supplemental oxygen, still has apnea episodes requiring intervention. But his lungs work. He's breathing.
Two pounds ten ounces now. Gaining steadily. Still impossibly small but growing.
"You can hold him," the nurse says at 3:00 PM. "Skin-to-skin, no ventilator tubes this time. Just you and him."
I've held him once before—that brief twenty minutes with all the tubes still attached. This is different. This is my son, breathing on his own, placed against my bare chest with only oxygen cannula and monitoring wires.
He weighs less than a bag of flour. Fits entirely on my chest. But he's warm and alive and breathing.
I cry. Can't help it. Four weeks of terror and uncertainty and fighting, and now he's in my arms breathing without machines.
Maksim's hands cover both of us—one on Nikolai's tiny back, one on my shoulder. Connecting all three of us.
"Our fighter," he whispers.
"Our miracle," I correct.
We stay like that for an hour—me holding Nikolai, Maksim holding both of us, all of us crying and grateful and still terrified but also hopeful for the first time since March 18th.
Week 8 (May 13th):
Nikolai reaches four pounds four ounces.
Still small—full-term babies are usually seven to nine pounds. But for a twenty-five-weeker, four pounds is massive progress.
He's feeding well. Breast milk through feeding tube initially, now trying bottle feeding. He's strong enough to suck, to swallow, to digest. Basic functions that seemed impossible eight weeks ago.
The doctors are cautiously—actually optimistic now, not just carefully neutral.
"He's beating every odd," Dr. Volkov tells us during morning rounds. "If he continues like this, homecoming might be possible in another month. Maybe six weeks."
Home. The word feels impossible. Nikolai has only ever existed in NICU—first in the incubator, now in an open crib, but always with monitoring wires and constant supervision. The idea of him in our mansion, in the nursery we prepared, living like a normal baby—
"Are you sure?" I ask. "Is he really strong enough for home?"
"Not yet. But he will be. He's proving it every day."
After the doctors leave, Maksim and I sit beside Nikolai's open crib—he graduated from the incubator two weeks ago, another milestone toward home.
"We're going to take him home," I say, testing the reality of it.
