Week 1 : All about patience

One thing that any parent whose child has been in NICU will vouch for is : Life in NICU is a lot more about patience than anything else. Every day is a brand new day and things can change by the hour. Some days bring hope and some days are worrisome (despite the fact that doctors will tell you nothing to worry about)!

I remember we went to visit my son at 7:30 AM and he was all happy and fine, sleeping quietly like an angel, we went 2 hours later around 9:30 and he was all naked but a diaper baby with the eye shield covering his eyes, his skin turned blue owing to reflection of the blue neon light he was being put under to fight jaundice. Both I and my husband were astonished. It was our first such encounter of visible change in a matter of hours. Finishing the jaundice story, Ayaan had jaundice again and this time we had met him the previous night with all angelic looks and yet again the next morning, there it was - the photo treatment machine with all the blue lights shining on his bare back. This time we were a lot less discomforted by the scene than before. 

Another thing to be patient about is the weight gain journey. As we learnt from our neonatal specialist, there's a U curve which babies follow around weight. So, when a premature baby is born, their weight will reduce in first few days, followed by steady and finally bump up and increase. I remember we started asking our specialist questions like exactly when will Ayaan gain this much weight etc. I now laugh at the expression she made and straight answered with a I don't know. She then calmly explained about how every baby is different and hence we can't predict exactly the development map with dates, but more realistically it's more of every day as it comes. Of course there are some markers that doctors monitor, but it's not a set plan as we are used to as working corporate parents! 

Patience is also the key in how the baby feed increases. Imagine being out of the delivery room and knowing that your little one can't have feed more than 5ml while normal kids take at least an ounce! My child long term was anyways going to be on formula as I would be going through chemotherapy and doctors had advised me not to try for breastmilk as they thought it wasn't worth the pain later. But the day 2 of the surgery when I came to know my baby is having a hard time pooping, it was just clear - I would use all remedies, all possible in my control to give him as much milk as possible for a week and make him stronger 😃 And then started the regime of 3 hours - pump - eat - sleep - pump and on and on. Seeing him slowly progress from 5ml to almost an ounce in week 1 was really rewarding!