“Yes, please,” she said, her voice a little husky.
The nurse—cause hell if I could remember which of the three names was hers—lifted the cover and I heard Dev suck in a breath.
“He’s so…”
“Tiny,” I said in agreement. “But he’s strong.”
“And feisty!” the nurse said with a grin. “He keeps pulling out his feeding tube. He’s mischievous."
“And he shoves us away when he wants us to leave him alone,” I added.
“Really?” Dev asked, laughing softly as she blinked back tears.
We showed her how to open up the isolette and I watched as Collin grabbed onto her finger with all his strength. She met my eyes and we both gave each other amazed looks. This was our baby. And he was incredible.
Remember when I told you the best day, the very best day was coming? It was today. Right now. The three of us together. My family, safe and healthy.
CHAPTER 42
Devyn
The next four days were a blur of activity. Two of the days I was feeling great. I was off pain meds, walking back and forth from the NICU to my room and I got to see my son snuggled into his isolette. Seeing him for the first time had brought tears to my eyes. The nurses let me help with his care time. You weren’t supposed to do a lot of touching with a preemie this small. They explained that you could give him hand hugs, though. Bolo stood by and watched as I got to interact with Collin for the first time. It had been so good to finally be with both my boys.
The doctor had come in and caught me up on Collin and how he was doing after his care time. Collin had been born a little bit smaller than would’ve been expected for his gestational age. The NICU doctor explained that it had been because my placenta had been failing. So even if the pre-eclampsia hadn’t gotten me theywould’ve had to deliver my son soon anyway. Though both of those things worked together to force the emergency C-section.
I reached into the isolette and Collin reached out and grabbed onto my finger. He held on with such strength and I knew he was going to be okay. He had a long road, but his odds were great. Thank God.
I stayed with him and Bolo as much as I could, but my pre-eclampsia wasn’t completely gone yet. The swelling in my limbs wasn’t going away. The water was sticking around in my body because my kidneys needed a chance to heal. That was affecting my blood pressure once more.
I was cast back to my room in the hospital while my boys were down the hall and I had to go back on the dreaded magnesium. My mom stayed with me, ran errands, let me cry as I sat there feeling miserable. She was my rock through it all, just as I knew Bolo was down the hall being Collin’s rock. I knew he was coming in and out as he could, and checking on me, even as the magnesium made it hard for me to stay awake.
I was sure this couldn’t be easy on him. A baby who needed him in the NICU and a sick wife who wasn’t with him. Having to choose to stay with one over the other wasn’t fair, but there was really never a choice. Collin needed him. We all knew that. No matter what, he mattered most.
I missed my baby. No. It was more than that. Everything was coming to a head and I just needed to hold him. But now I was stuck back in my room. Sick. Miserable. Wanting to be with them.
It was a rough twenty-four hours on the medication, but Dr. Natalie came in the next day and took me off it and we came up with a new plan now that my kidneys were beginning to respond well again. I took a long nap after a sleepless night.
I was awoken by a NICU doctor I’d met one of the days when I’d visited my son. She told me they were hoping I could comehold my baby today.Yes. OMG yes!Even if I had to drag myself there, I told her I’d be there to do skin to skin.
I got up, felt almost human, took a shower, and hugged Bolo in our son’s NICU room when I got there. And now here I was, sitting in a recliner while the nurses got Collin ready to transfer onto my chest.
“You get to hold our baby.” He smiled at me.
The fact that this man was smiling at me, happy for me, when he must also want to be able to hold his son just showed how incredible he was. The night before I’d been in tears because I thought I wasn’t going to get to be there for my son’s first time being held. Not that I wouldn’t want Bolo to get to hold him. I was distraught over not getting to see it happen. I’d known that it was likely happening today and I wasn’t sure the doctors would let me go over while hooked up to the magnesium IV. Or if I’d be off it in time to take part.
I should have realized that neither Bolo nor the doctors were going to allow anyone to hold Collin before I got the chance. That really only occurred to me months later. They tried to make sure that Mom was the first one to hold, especially in a situation like this where we’ve had to wait several days.
I was going to get to be the one who held my son first. As much as I wanted Bolo to have that opportunity as well, I wasn’t about to turn this gift away.
Collin had been doing well, but the nurses explained that little boys tended to struggle a bit more with breathing than girls when born premature. We’d watched a procedure after his birth where they used steroids to help his lungs get stronger. Even when everyone was trying to help, it was hard to watch your baby go through that and not be able to do anything. But we sat stoically in the corner so we didn’t get kicked out.
I could see why a mother would freak out to the point where she would have to be removed. The procedure wasn’t exactlygentle looking. But panicking wouldn’t help anyone, least of all Collin. Being there as moral support for him had been more important than my own sense of panic.
Bolo gave me updates on the trials that Collin faced while I was forced to be away from them. He was still struggling a bit. Nothing major—in retrospect—but when it was your son struggling to breathe it seemed that way. The doctors didn’t deem it as an emergency because there were so many protocols to help him.
Bolo had referred to the events as ‘flow chart emergencies’, things that were an emergency and needed to be corrected immediately, but were so routine to the staff that they could follow a flow chart and solve it right away. The NICU staff was amazing. Well-versed in everything they needed to do. They worked with Collin until he was finally on a machine that helped him breathe better, with a CPAP mask that fit him better, and he was just…doing better.
Which brought us to today. The second time my world shifted. The first was the day he came into the world. And even though I was happy before to see him, hear his cries, and touch him inside his little isolette, the minute they laid him on my chest, it all changed again.
