In honor of this month's "Everything Baby" issue of Colorado Parent - my wife decided to have our baby 7 weeks early! Wasn't that nice of her?
What a whirlwind the past couple of weeks have been for us! Here's the haps, my wife had been extremely in tune with her body during this pregnancy and we were enjoying all of the movements we were getting from our baby. She was very active, and it was fun watching her use Mama's belly as a punching bag. This is why we became concerned when Nicole started noticing that she was not experiencing the movement from our daughter that we were used to. Feeling something wasn't right, Nicole made an appointment to see what the heck was going on.
Nicole left work early to go see her OBGYN and they started administering the general "wake your baby up" tests. They did a non-stress test, an ultrasound, and some general poking and pushing to see if they could stimulate our lazy fetus. I think they even tickled Nicole's feet with a feather, I'm not sure. After some consultation from the medical team and some awkward whispering in the corner, the doctors decided it was time for our baby to see the light.
Please enjoy this free wheelchair ride down to the hospital.
One emergency C-section and a couple of stressful hours later we had a small, but mighty little pea-pod enjoying some very expensive babysitters and one heck of a cool sauna machine in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). A place in the hospital we came to affectionately call the "womb with a view".
Or sweet little baby had arrived to a couple of perplexed parents who were experiencing the reality of how things just sometimes don't go the way they're planned.
We both had to chuckle because the day before this all went down Nicole had dropped off our "Birth Plan Packet" to the hospital. This packet was supposed to be our blueprint for how magical and perfect the birth of our daughter was supposed to be. For me, an over-planner this was the Holy Grail of having a baby. If you're a parent, or soon-to-be one, you've probably filled out this packet for your birth experience. It contains everything from aromatherapy births to what flavor Jell-O you want for your post-push snack.
Well, for us we might as well have taken that packet and run it through the shredder. Life has a way of slapping you upside the placenta and sending you in a different direction. No matter how much you plan and no matter how much you prepare sometimes you have to adapt to a different course. Although we had the perfect scenario written out on paper for our experience, I feel the time we spent in the NICU actually made us stronger and more appreciative as parents. We came close to losing our little girl and in the process received a healthy dose of good ol' perspective. Life as we know it has dramatically changed, and for that, we are truly grateful.
Our little Peanut is now home with her rambunctious 3-year-old brother, an OCD dad who loves to vacuum, and one Boston Terrier who likes to sneeze, snort, and roll around next to her bassinet at 2:00 in the morning. If she only knew about the busy and noisy world she was entering, she probably would have given that ultrasound machine a little wave and continued to enjoy her little tummy vacation.
-As featured in Colorado Parent Magazine, May 2015