#CutenessOverload ! From a NICU bay in Penrith, to little ol' Dubbo..
I was wheeled in to the NICU in my hospital bed, still in a daze from the pain relief I'd been given after my cesarean section. I was scared of how these next few moments would go.
"Baby Thomson?" the man pushing my bed asked.
"Bay one", a woman said, directing us all the way down the end.
My bed was lined up with a perspex box. As I looked around, there were five other boxes, just like that one, each one with tubes and wires running in to it, and monitors and machines all around them. There were babies in those boxes.. my baby was in this one.
I won't get into my story -- you can read it here.
That moment, I was so happy to be the Momma of another beautiful baby, but later that night, the fear of a baby born too soon had begun to sink in and my heart was absolutely broken for the months which were about to come.
The following day, John and the two older kids arrived from Dubbo. I felt so much relief to have them in Penrith with Carter and I.
As we took photos of John and the kids meeting Carter, I accidentally got the parents of the baby next to Carter in the background of one..
That night, I introduced myself to those parents, Ash & Scott, who introduced us to their baby boy, 'Blake'.
Blake was a 35-weeker who stopped breathing shortly after he was born and was taken to the NICU.. two days later, he suffered a pneumothorax, in the middle of the night, and had to have a lifesaving operation.
The length of time you spend within those NICU walls doesn't really determine whether your baby had a difficult time or not.
Blake spent 15 days in the NICU & SCN. Carter; 102 days.
Blake had to have an operation to live.. Carter wasn't operated on at all.
Blake almost died.. more than once. Carter almost died.. more than once.
Blake's mum, Ash, was woken by a nurse, in the middle of the night, to tell her that her baby was suddenly fighting for his life. Imagine that moment. Life is already scary enough when your baby is in the NICU. They're in intensive care for a reason. That fear.. and then the fear of knowing your baby is being operated on.. it breaks you.
Carter; well, he gave us four extra memorable moments. The 'big one' was when he got sick. It was a horrible time and it came with the most life-crushing feeling.
I watched him go from an open cot in the Special Care Nursery (and about to go home!), to going back into a closed crib in a tiny isolation room, where he went back on oxygen and TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition = a fluid which is given through a vein, giving these sick and tiny bubbies the essential nutrients they need when they can't be fed).
When Carter first got sick, no one could figure out what was wrong with him. He was vomiting all his feeds back up and having episodes of apnoea, where his oxygen saturation level was dropping dangerously low.
I'd heard Carter cough the day before, but no one mentioned it until the following day, during the doctor's rounds. No one else had heard the cough except for me, so one of Carter's doctors sat with me the entire morning, waiting to hear Carter's cough. It was thought that it was just a 'reflux cough', something he'd had for weeks, so I'd become familiar with what it sounded like.. and this wasn't it.
Of course, Carter didn't cough. So, in the mean time, Carter's doctor had a variety of tests done to try figure out what was going on with him, before deciding to move him back into intensive care after he had another, very low, drop in oxygen saturation.
Eventually, a test came back positive for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), a virus which causes infection of the lungs and breathing passages, and is one of the most frequent causes of the 'common cold'. However, what may be seen as a 'common cold' in an adult, can be life-threatening to a premature baby with Chronic Lung Disease and a weak immune system. We were prepared for the worst by Carter's doctors and even sent our older children to stay with my parents in Melbourne while we spent every waking moment at Carter's side.
It was a tough few weeks, but Carter made it through, eventually being taken off the oxygen and being transferred to a hospital in our home town, Dubbo.
John and I instantly got on with Ash and Scott and they were so sweet to our other children. Havanah took an extra special liking to Ash because they had the same drink bottle.. she would tell people that Ash was her 'adult friend'.. we got odd looks and had to explain the situation a number of times.
Being in the NICU, you don't really 'ease' into getting to know other parents. It's a huge leap into introducing yourself, before sliding effortlessly into breast pumps, breast milk and how you haven't showered for a couple of days.
Ash and I had known each other for less than 48 hours before we'd seen each other ugly cry. Scott and John had known each other no more than 24 hours before they were sharing a sink to rinse out our breast pumps.
Ash would come to the NICU in the morning and stay all day; Scott coming in straight after work, often eating his microwave dinner in the family room with John, while Ash and I had cuddles with the boys.
We all got on so well and it was like we'd known each other forever. After a 15 day stay, Blake was being discharged home, and John and I were back to having lunch alone and quiet nights in the family room.
A few days later, Ash was calling in to Hope Cottage, where we were staying, to deliver an assortment of goodies to help make our stay a little easier.
Delicious homemade meals, sweet treats for all of us, a gift card and data credit for John to watch his beloved Boston Celtics in the playoffs.
A couple of days after that, Ash was back to drop off more meals and some delicious brownies. We couldn't believe it. I sat on the floor of our little studio room and bawled my eyes out. I couldn't believe their generosity. Having known us for less than two weeks, their generosity was pulling us through our hardest times.
When ANZAC Day rolled around a couple of weeks later, John was desperate to go to a dawn service, but was unfamiliar with the area we were in and had no idea where the local services were held. Scott came to the hospital and he and John went to the dawn service together, returning in time for John to go to the NICU before I woke up, snapping a photo of Carter for me to wake up to.
Ash and Scott were there for us in our most difficult days.
When we flew back to Dubbo, we kept in touch with them regularly, being sure to catch up for dinner when we were back in Penrith for Carter's checkups.
Recently, they brought Blake to Dubbo. As fate would have it, I was, of course, scheduled for a 24 hour Holter monitor to keep an eye on my own health -- which you can read about here , so I wasn't prepared to jump into a group photo once I was done shooting a Mini Family Session for them, but I knew that one day, we would look back at that group photo, once Blake and Carter were all grown up, and not believe how far our little fighters had come.
We had to get some photos of the boys together, too. Again, we weren't prepared to have Carter jump in either, but he and his little ponytail got thrown in and we all jumped around to try get them both smiling at the same time. Eventually, we just rolled with what they wanted to do..
One day, someone's going to ask them how they know each other, and they'll get to tell the story of how they fought for their lives, alongside each other. That's not a story you hear too often.
