NICU

Right after the babies were born they were taken to a stabilization room right across the hall from the operating room. There the babies were intubated and hooked up to every monitor and tube you could think of. The room is best described as being controlled chaos as people were working very quickly and loudly but with purpose and team work.

The babies stayed in the stabilization room for about an hour before they were taken upstairs to the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit.) Adam was allowed to go with the doctors and nurses as they went upstairs. As the babies would arrive the nurses would ask for the names, “Baby A Daddy? Charlie! Baby B? Dorothy! Baby C? No clue.” One of the nurses taking care of the eventual Benjamin was not very happy that he didn’t have a name so she and the other nurses took a paper towel and made a makeshift chart of their favorite names. Two nights later that same nurse was at the front security door and wouldn’t let us in until we gave her a name. She was happy to hear we finally chose Benjamin David.

The nurses quickly told us that we needed to prepare for a bumpy road where two days the babies would be doing great and the next there would be some complications.

By the time I was able to see the babies the next day the babies were hooked up to a large, bulky nasal cannula called a Bubble C PAP which helped to keep the lungs open and moist. They were no longer being intubated about 2 hours after birth and were breathing the same air as the rest of us. Each baby had to get “pick lines” put in shortly after and this was easy for both Dorothy and Charlie but Benjamin struggled with this for a few days and we were very relieved when the pick line finally took. We would find that this would be a common theme for Benjamin and would have to fight a lot more than the others in many different circumstances. The pick lines basically just delivered medication and lipids into their body.

A couple days after their birth we were allowed to take Dorothy out of her isolate and hold her for about 20 -30 minutes. The following days we were able to hold them doing Kangaroo Care (skin to skin) where I would stuff them in my shirt and cleavage while Adam would have to take his shirt off and cover them in blankets. This started to make everything feel so much better.

After about a week the babies were taken off the Bubble C PAP’s one day after the other and put on high flow nasal cannulas which allowed us to see much more of their faces. That was a wonderful day and we were able to start seeing resemblances in William and them.