12.25.16

Our First Christmas Home

Christmas Eve last year we walked into NICU Nursery A as we had for two months at this point and listened to the doctors and nurses do rounds on Jack to give updates of what happened overnight and the game plan for today. When our Nurse, Dawn, gave his stat updates to the team we will never forget “Baby Moreau is now 1,500 grams up 5 grams from yesterday. Oh! Jack is 1,500 – should we try with the temperature probes off? Yes? Great! Mom/Dad- when you come in tomorrow you can bring in a onesie and we will see if Jack can self regulate his body heat inside his isolette”

I was told the last line of what Nurse Dawn said because I had bee lined it back to our car where I had been building a preemie wardrobe in our trunk. Waiting for the moment we would be told our child had finally reached the 3 pound mark and we could dress him. Like a real baby. It was the Christmas miracle we needed. The hope of a shred of normalcy we had longed for since October. 

It was our first Christmas as a family and as you can imagine, it was not how we envisioned celebrating. There was no child bounding down the stairs bursting to see what Santa left him, there wasn’t a flurry of wrapping paper flying across the living room. It was quiet beeping of ventilators, it was families huddled around isolettes, it was our norm. And it is a memory that saddens us but one we cherish forever. For it was in this memory the magic of Christmas was still found in the small act of our nurses helping us take pictures by our incredibly small tree atop jacks isolette and instead of just taking one- they spent most of their day trying to get the perfect shot- hiding jack’s breathing and feed tubes under our arms, propping “Nic” our elf on the shelf on our shoulder, even stuffing jack in a stocking. 

Looking back at these first Christmas pictures (Merry Christmas & Elf on the Shelf ) we can remember every second of the holiday and how lucky are we that the entire staff that didn’t get to spend Christmas with their own families made ours their priority. 

That’s the magic of Christmas. That and believing in miracles. We believe. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turns out all we needed was our laundry basket, some twine and a bath towel…