Marcellus continues to improve

The first day was exhausting both physically and emotionally.  In a short time we went from preparing for a natural birth at home by the Christmas tree to a completely unnatural cesarean and a baby hooked up to every damn monitor in the world.  Adjusting to this was really quite difficult.  It felt like fate had taken our homebirth and our ideologies and provided its own.  We were at the complete mercy of the hospital and its doctors.  We had no control.  We were powerless.

But we had him, even though he was 11 weeks early.  We had him and he was healthy.  The doctors were amazed at how well he was doing.  Especially for a white male which statistically are the worst preemie babies.  They would say 'Marcellus does not suffer from WWS'  which stands for Wimpy Whiteboy Syndrome.  That made my wife and I so very proud of him and gave us tons of hope.  She is in school for her PhD in Statistics and I was in my first semester of prenursing.  Marcellus changed all of our plans.  She suspended her research and I missed a week of class to take care of her and be with him.  I did not care because I was finally with my family, we had our son, we had our child, we were so happy. 

Our happiness continued for the next 11 days.  For 11 days we had our wonderful son.  He never left the NICU of course and the doctors said he would be in there for a long time but we did not really care.  The NICU was not a burden to us.  It was just something we had to endure to see him and spend time with him.

Some of the time we spent with him was the best time of my life.  We got to k-care him, which was really kangaroo care.  Skin to skin contact which when done by the mother and father improves the health of the baby.  At first we only got to k-care for an hour at a time because of his body temperature but when he was able to regulate his body temperature a few days out we would k-care for hours.  Having my son on my chest resting, living, breathing, growing, and pooping was the most wonderful times I had him in the NICU.  I felt like I was actively participating in his care during these sessions.  I would have k-cared him for the rest of my life.

I was so glad to be a daddy, my life purpose is to be a father, to have children.  I miss my son very much.