My husband got out of work early that day. It was a day of celebration for us. Our boy’s lung was “healed” and he was no longer just “stable”. He was improving!
It was a huge milestone and success. Seeing our boy with one less tube in his frail body was invigorating. We had been so sad and felt lost for what seemed like a lifetime. For me, my world was at a stand still. But here he was, getting better. It felt like the conveyor belt of life start moving again. It meant that he was one tiny step closer to coming home.
We knew that he still had many more obstacles to overcome. At this point he was eight days old. His birth weight was 3 lbs. 12 oz.. Due to his collapsed lung and subsequent chest tube, he was unable to be fed. Even by tube. He had yet to learn the taste of breastmilk or formula. He was subsisting on IV fluids being injected into his tiny veins. He lost weight and dwindled down to 2 lbs 10 oz.. He had lost more than a whole pound!
Little Mister still had to learn how to breathe on his own. He was still very much dependent on the ventilator.
His body needed to learn how to self regulate it’s temperature, therefore he still required the warmth of the incubator.
His brain, lungs and heart needed to find their life sustaining rhythms. His brain would “forget” to send signals to his lungs to make him breathe. His brain would “forget” to send signals to his heart to make it beat.
He still had so much more healing and growing that he needed to do before we could even begin to hope that he would come home soon. But we took that day as a day of victory and celebration. It was a step closer to us being able to bring him home. Being weaned off of the chest tube was a monumental task for him to have achieved. His little body has already been so battered and been through such awful trauma, and he was overcoming an awesome feat for someone who weighed less than 3 lbs and was only on this earth for one week.
He is my warrior, my fighter, my champion and a survivor!
He is my son!
There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with. ~ Marcus Aurelius
Parker C Quinn 