Aaron's NICU stay

This is me holding Aaron for the first time. It was amazing! He was 5 days old.

One of our first photos of Aaron. He is so swollen, but you can see how beautiful he is!

I wish I had time during Aaron's stay in the NICU to blog. The closest I have are the emails we sent to friends and family at the time. I will say now that I felt entirely desperate initially about his prognosis. As a pediatrician, I flashed back on every gravely disabled child I had ever taken care of. In a day, everything changed for us. All of our hopes and dreams for a little brother for Sam, two boys playing together, family vacations, kindergarden, college seemed gone. I found myself bargaining with G-d, please just let him recognize us, please just let him be able to eat on his own, please just let him be able to use his arms. The neonatology fellow told us that we could "hope for normal" but that seemed too much to expect for this gravely ill little boy. I wouldn't even allow myself to picture it.

It was a time of highs and lows. It seemed to me like everytime we had cause to celebrate (he opened his eyes, he came off of the ventilator, etc) there would be a major setback, another seizure. After the cap came off, the seizures continued, requiring two medications to cease. I can't describe even now the despair I felt.

Here are our emails...

Dear Family and Friends,

We are pleased to announce that our son, Aaron Jacob Jane, was born on Thursday, March 6th at 3:22 am. He weighed 8lbs, 3 oz. at birth. Unfortunately, he had a rocky delivery by emergency cesarean and got transfered to the neonatal intensive care unit at Univ of Mich, where he is being treated. He seems to be a fighter and is doing as well as can be expected. We ask you to keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

Lauren has been recovering at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital and should be discharged this afternoon. She is anxious to be reunited with Aaron! We appreciate all of your phone calls, prayers and offers of assistance.

I remember this first email, trying to figure out what to tell people. We wanted to be as positive as possible and tried not to stigmatize our little one.

Hello friends,
Thank you to everyone for your well wishes. I am home from the hospital. Unfortunately, Aaron was deprived of oxygen at birth. We feel fortunate that he was able to be transferred to UM where they have started cooling babies to try to prevent brain injury with some promising results. We have heard of some miraculous recoveries so of course that is what we are praying for. They have started rewarming him today. He remains on the ventilator. It promises to be a very long road with likely setbacks, but we can only pray that the steps forward will outweigh the setbacks. We appreciate any prayers/well wishes you can send up for our little boy.
We are not yet up for visitors but hope to see you all when he is doing better. We will try to send pictures then, he is truly beautiful with dark hair.
With love,
Lauren and Matt

At this point, we felt so bleak about Aaron. Matt and I would ask ourselves what kind of life he could possibly have? How were we going to survive this?

Dear Friends,
We would like to thank you for all the heartfelt messages of support, love, prayers and offers of help. It has truly been a blessing and helped to give us strength.
The best news is that Matt and I held our little boy tonight. He has been off of the ventilator for over 24 hours now and his breathing is strong. Unfortunately, he has had some seizures on the monitors (nothing the doctors or nurses can see, but on an EEG monitor). No one is sure what that means for Aaron but he is being treated for them. The medicine makes him very sleepy, so we are still waiting for him to wake up. There are some very promising signs and we continue to pray for his full recovery. This will be a marathon, but our little boy shows every sign of being a fighter. We will continue to send updates when we are able and our deepest gratitude again for your friendship.
With love,
Lauren and Matt

Oh, holding Aaron for the first time was so wonderful. I can honestly say it was the first time I really thought about bringing him home. Before that, I couldn't even walk into the nursery at home. I was still so scared because he continued to be comatose. His gag and suck reflexes were weak and he was rag-doll floppy.

Our friends and family were amazing. My mom moved in, and my dad was around almost non-stop. My sister came in from DC and to this day, I don't know how I would have survived without them. Friends brought food, gifts for Sam. We were too worried to even see anyone, but our friends persisted in offering support. It was the blessing of this ordeal.

Hello Friends,
Aaron is doing much better. He is a little more awake every day. Today, he has nursed for about 6-7 minutes twice. He is still not digesting too well, probably due to some of his medicines, but we are very encouraged by the nursing. There haven't been seizures. We had a scare on Thursday night when he had a fever, but his cultures have all been negative and his temps are now fine. He still hasn't shown us a good strong cry but he does make lots of little growly noises. We have some cute pictures which I will forward as soon as I can get a chance. He looks just like Matt's baby pics! I am really proud of how he is doing considering all he has been through.
I want to thank you all for all the food, prayers, and well wishes. We feel so grateful for your support and look forward to introducing Aaron when he is stronger.
Love,
Lauren
The nursing was so exciting for me. I was starting to admire this little man, he was such a fighter!

Hi everyone,

Attached are a couple pictures of Aaron. Sorry that it took so long. We have many more that we will email soon, especially since he will be coming home on Monday! He has made a lot of progress over the last few days and feeding has gone very well. Thanks again for all of your love and support. Lauren and I truly have been touched and amazed by how generous and thoughtful each of you have been. We look forward to introducing you to our new son.

Matt and Lauren

This was the last post before we brought Aaron home. I got mastitis and was hospitalized myself for 3 days. The best thing about that was that they let me take Aaron for 24 hours in my hospital room, a good "dry run" for going home. Also, Sam visited us both in the hospital. During the pregnancy, I had looked forward so much to Sam visiting his new baby brother and he wasn't able to see him in the NICU at all. So, we were sort of able to recreate that moment.

Overall, the time in the NICU seems a blur in retrospect. It was bizarre for me to be back in the NICU where I had spent so much time in residency as a parent. I tried desperately to maintain control, and sometimes felt detached from Aaron. The staff treated us wonderfully, and in some ways, I felt I was among friends. But it was so strange being that family, the ones everyone feels sorry for.