Monday March 26th

Monday morning started out quite rainy. After a wakeup call that scared the crap out of me because I thought it was the NICU, but really it was about his birth certificate, I was up and ready to go. My perinatologist came in to talk to me about our discharge date and our plans for the rest of the day, then we got ready to go for the morning. Since I arrived by ambulance on Thursday I didn't have any clothes, and hadn't thought to have Solomon bring me any from home because we thought I was going to be pregnant a while longer. I had to use a wheelchair to get to the NICU, not because I couldn't walk...but because those hospital gowns are not exactly modest :) Thankfully Aunt Sarah hand gotten me some gym pants and a tshirt late Sunday night and put them in the car. I headed over to the NICU while S went out to get them. When all of his 'cares' were finished about an hour later, one of Solomon's co workers was waiting for us, so we went back to my room and visited until she had to go back to work. We had a lot of hospital workers visit with us that day, some standard and others because he is premature. We made sure we were in the NICU for all of his care times, even though they kept changing them! The decided Max was doing well enough that they would move him from every 3 hours to every 4. I love changes like that :)

They had taken him off the vent at 1:00pm so I was scared at how he would look without it, it took me several minutes of staring at the monitors before I was convinced he wasn't going to just stop breathing. I couldn't watch them take it out, but they let me help put the nasal cannula in place around his ears.
The RRT asked me if I wanted to hold him when we were there in the afternoon. They warned me it would only be for a few minutes, but she would make it work for me. She also let us help in changing his diaper and S was able to lift him up so they could weigh him Monday was a really great day for us. He continued to stay in the stable range while I held him so she even let me go 2 minutes longer than she told me at first. It was indescribable so I won't even try.



When his night cares happened I was worried we would go in to find him back on the vent and was so beyond grateful he wasn't. So many people--even complete strangers are praying for this little guy and it sure seems to be working.