We got home after 6pm and I was exhausted. We got the house settled after 3 days away, and spent some time with our very understanding, but very lonely 3 dogs. We headed back to the hospital for Bettie's 9pm feeding, spent a little more time with her, then got home again around 11. I was about to collapse from exhaustion when the doorbell rang. I was initially outraged because it was so late and we'd just gotten home.
It was my neighbor. She had tears in her eyes and handed me a small present. She said to open it after she left, but she thought we probably needed it. She gave me a hug, said congratulations, then headed back to her house. The gift? It was a Baby's First Christmas ornament. It was beautiful, and she was right. We didn't have one because we didn't expect Bettie before Christmas. It was such a touching and generous gesture I broke down into hysterics. Sometimes those little gestures mean so much.
The next few days involved a flurry of visitors and trips to the hospital. Bettie got to meet both of her grandfathers and an uncle. We watched our sweet little girl grow stronger and put on a little weight. Adam got to change his first diaper, then I got to change my first. We were constantly running back and forth to the hospital to spend as much time as we could with our little Bettie. We missed her bellybutton stump falling off. One feeding it was there and the next it was gone.
She was slowly disconnected from gadgets and by day 7 in the NICU, she was moved to an open air bassinet. At that point we had so much more freedom with her and could touch her as much as we wanted to. That was pure, unadulterated heaven. We were participating in most of her feedings, around the clock (I was up pumping anyway). We had a few nurses who celebrated the mini-milestones and worked diligently with us to get her healthy enough for discharge.
We rang in 2009 in the NICU with a bottle of sparkling grape juice. There were a few other NICU parents there. Bettie was asleep at midnight, but I got my New Year's kiss anyway. She was scheduled for a 1am feeding, so we got a picture of me feeding her in her fancy New Years Eve hat. :)
Bettie was getting so close to meeting the criteria for discharge--eating well, gaining weight and maintaining her body temperature in an open air bassinet. We got to meet with a developmental psychologist. That was fun. She told us about all of the developmental delays we could expect with Bettie's prematurity. She made it sound like a done deal. She lost credibility points with me, however, when she was talking about diet and started evangelizing about the evils of high fructose corn syrup. I agreed with her on some points. The loss of credibility came with her pronunciation of fructose. She kept saying "fruck-tose". I started ignoring her after that. She had nothing encouraging to say beyond promising us a future with learning disabilities and delays.
Next we got to meet with an actual doctor in the NICU. Bettie had been in there for almost two weeks and this was the first doctor we'd gotten to see. The doctor was also a ray of sunshine. The highlight of the conversation revolved around Bettie's temperature. She explained that if we allowed Bettie's temperature to drop, we would have to take her to the pediatric ER. Because it was RSV season, she would likely contract RSV and could die. She actually ended the conversation with the word fatal. Thanks a lot, Dr. Doom. Because of that conversation, when Bettie did come home, we kept the house positively tropical. It was so hot that I was sweating all the time. I learned that Bettie could sweat, too. When I discovered her sweaty in the tropical heat of the house, multiple layers of clothes and blankets, I realized we were overreacting. Sometimes a little dose of common sense tempered with the advice of a doctor can go a long way. I could have done without the scare tactics though.
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