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Challenge: NICU Parenting

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I had had the "perfect" pregnancy, no morning sickness, no pain, just sleepy! Before my 28 week appointment I started to have a little bit of a discharge, so they did an ultrasound to check my cervix length and baby. They called back on Thursday and said everything looked great! Saturday morning I went to my best friends baby shower and was having stomach pains. By that night, I was having severe pains and bleeding. We drove an hour to the hospital where they monitored me and baby for 2 hours. After those 2 hours they flew me to a hospital 3 hours away where they had a NiCU to care for baby. After 2.5 days of trying to stop the contractions and labor, my little 2#11oz Halloween baby was born at 28 weeks and 6 days. He was thriving in the NICU, but at a week we found out that he had some bleeding in the brain that was causing his ventricles to become enlarged (IVH grade 3). They monitored it for a week and then decided that we needed to go to the nearest Children's Hospital. When our little boy was 2 weeks old, we were flown 10 hours away and the next day he underwent neurological surgery. They placed a Rickham Reservoir so they had access to pull excess fluid out of his ventricles. After his surgery they pulled fluid off 3 times and then everything stablized. We spent 65 total days in the NICU and we're blessed with the most amazing nurses and doctors who loved our son as their own! Since we were 10 hours away from home, we spent 10-12 hours every day at the hospital with our son, so our nurses became like family.

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