Inconceivable!!

Hey, everyone. It's me, Nathan Thomas Massey. Dad has been radio silent for about a month so I thought I would give him a break and just write for him. This might the first blog ever written by a baby, and many who stumble upon this will marvel at my literary wit, not to mention the fact I can use a computer, but I've learned a lot in the month I've been around. Also, this will read like narration, and narrators need a voice, so for the remainder of this imagine that I sound like this guy:

I'll start at the beginning: my birth.

I was born at 9:01am on the 27th of September and things started off pretty, pretty, pretty rough for me. Dr. Kohl-Thomas cut me out of Mom and they got to do the whole "Circle of Life" moment when I was lifted in the air for Mom to see me and then I was immediately whisked away into the arms of NICU. They poked me and listened to my heartbeat and my breathing and then things got fun. I've been in the outside world for a whole 5 minutes and they are already stressing me out. I was moved from the OR straight to NICU and they realized that my lungs weren't exactly filling with air, even with the CPAP on me. This wasn't good. I mean, I was pulled out 6 weeks ahead of schedule, but I was told once that too be on time is to be late, and to be early is to be on time. In retrospect, that advice only applies to meetings, rehearsals and appointments, not births. My lungs had much further to go than we all anticipated. 

While Mom and Dad got moved to a postpartum room I had a whole bunch of nurses and doctors monitoring me. They even put in a breathing tube and put me on a ventilator since the CPAP wasn't helping. They moved me into my own room away from the other babies. Apparently, I was sensitive to light and noise and whiny babies and bright lights do not a happy Massey baby make. I was diagnosed with Pulmonary Hypertension, which is quite common in preemies, but in my case it was much more severe than they thought. I was put on an Oscillator that pumped my lungs with 900 breaths per minute. In addition to the breathing help I was given a ton of medicines to keep me comfortable. My room looked like Dr. Frankenstein's lab. 

Night #2 was pretty rough for Mom and Dad. While I was being treated a doctor visited them to tell them that I wasn't getting better like they wanted and that they were going to have to take more drastic measures to help me breathe. My lungs were lacking in something called Surfactant, which is a substance that keeps the tiny air pockets in my lungs open. So, they told them they were going to dose me with that, give me some steroids and put me on Nitric Oxcide. Yep. They were going to fill my little lungs with the same stuff that meathead Vin Diesel put in his car in The Fast and Furious. Apparently it helps to open up all the blood vessels in the body. The downside was that since I was so "new" and so "early" the blood vessel's in my head may not have developed all the way so there was a chance I might bleed into my brain. They would know pretty quick if the nitric was helping or not.

BLEED INTO MY BRAIN! INCONCEIVABLE!!!

So Mom and Dad came to see me and tell me that I was going to be ok, even though I could tell they were absolutely terrified. Dad made Mommy go back to the room since she had only given birth to me the day before and she needed to rest, but he came back into the room and stayed until 4 in the morning to see if everything worked. I could hear him sing me songs like "Blackbird and "I Will" and  "Mother Nature's Son." He seemed to only know Beatle songs. He also seemed to not be able sing any of them without crying. I can't imagine why. It's not as if he could hold me or feed me, or really touch me. I was a sensitive man and too much stimulation would raise my heartbeat to dangerous levels. In addition to my breathing the doctors discovered I had a PDA, Patent Ductus Arteriosus, which is common when you're a little dude like me and have Pulmonary Hypertension. Basically it mean that my heart had a hole in it. I had a lot going on.

My parents both came to visit me over the next few days until Mommy got discharged. From what I could tell this was really hard for Mom and Dad to do. There wasn't really anything they could do for me but stare at me and hope that all my levels were reading better each day. Apparently, I was taking the "teach my parents a whole new level of patience" thing pretty seriously. But its not like they just abandoned me there. Dad came to see me every morning before he went to work and Mommy would come up around 11 and stay with me and then Dad would come after work and stay as well. I would have days when they would be able to give me less Oxygen but then I would decide that I didn't want to do all the breathing and they'd have to turn it back up.  I'm sure the most exciting episode was the night that they placed a PICC line in me so they could give me IV's. Mom was just hanging out in the room with me, along with my Great Aunt Patti, and they had put the line a little too far in me and my heart decided to go into ludicrous speed. The monitors went off like Three Mile Island (google it) and poor Mom was stuck in there while a squadron of nurses and doctors came flooding in trying to get my heartbeat down. Mom said her favorite part was when one of the doctors walked in and said to her "Don't freak out" and then to took two ice bags and just smothered my face with them. It was cold. It was very very cold. When Dad came in he had no idea what he had walked into but it seemed like something out of Grey's Anatomy but without the witty dialogue and amorous tension. As soon as they pulled the line out my heart went back to normal, and so did Mom and Dad's. The nurses said I was going to be pretty out of the next day since what I had just gone through was the equivalent of running 2 marathons, and I may have only been on earth for a month now, but I'm a Massey and I'm sure that will be the only time the words "Massey" and "Marathon" are in the same sentence, unless it is in reference to TV binge watching. 

OH! I almost forgot. I had kidney problems too. For the love of Vishnu! They performed an ultrasound on me and noticed that my kidney's were backing up with fluid and that when I had to whiz I was having to make a lot of effort to get it out. So, a bunch of residents came and talked to us and drew a diagram of my kidneys and "pee hole", which is a direct quote from one of the doctors, a doctor who went to Medical School so he could use official phrases like "pee hole" and sound professional. They were afraid that I had little flaps in my urethra that were keeping urine from going out so they ordered an XRAY where they would put put some dye up into my "pee hole" (his phrase, not mine) and then see how everything was flowing. Unfortunately I wasn't well enough to be moved so I had to wait a while to get better before they could do more to me. After about a week and a half I decided, the heck with this, I'm going to start breathing. So I did. The doctors kept telling my parents that's what would happen, and they were right. I wasn't completely out of the woods though. They moved me to a different NICU pod and put me on just the CPAP along with a feeding tube. It was 10 days into my stay before Mom and Dad could hold me. I overheard them say it was one of the best experiences of their lives, but they've never had a corn dog from the State Fair, so who knows how amazing it actually was. They eventually ran the test and my kidney's looked fine, which was awesome, and they also did X-rays that showed that the PDA had cleared up, which was awesome too. I was finally getting better.

After about 2 weeks I was taken completely off the oxygen, which just left feeding. This was the most annoying part for Mom and Dad. I know this because when I had trouble breathing they never said things like "Hurry up! Breathe, you little fart! We want to take you home." I can understand their impatience, I mean, I wanted to go home too, however, when was the last time you could be asleep AND eat at the same time? Right?!? You wouldn't just give that up cold turkey. I was living the dream. I was being fed every 3 hours and whatever I didn't finish they would just pump in me using the feeding tube. Mom and Dad would feed me from the bottle and I would do my best impression of a narcoleptic and zonk out. The doctors weren't going to let me go home until I was able to eat 80% of my feeds. At the rate I was going I would get out of the hospital by the time I could get my learner's permit to drive. Eventually, it took the bravery of a NICU nurse to tell the doctors to let me be fed when I was actually hungry and to not let me have the rest of my food when I had stopped. I needed to learn what it was like to be hungry. Within 48 hrs of this new regiment I was eating the amount I needed to. The last test was to have me spend the night in an overnight room with my parents, completely free of monitors, and if I gained weight then I would go home the next day. 

I'm a Massey. I can gain me some weight.

The next day Mom and Dad got to take me home, 1 month exactly to the day I was born. Life at the Massey house has been pretty awesome. They put cute little outfits on me, I got my own room and whole bunch of stuff. When I cry they feed me or change my diaper or give me my pacifier with the little lion attached to it that I have named Lambert. I haven't told Mom and Dad that I've given him a name but they don't need to know everything. I sleep a lot and these weird animals will occasionally stare at me when they aren't stealing my bassinet and sleeping in it. Mom and Dad said they are "cats" but they seem more like living bed warmers who are occasionally curious but mostly indifferent to my presence. I really like Mom and Dad though. They love to give hugs and kisses but right now I just love the fact that they feed me and wrap me up tight to go to bed. I have only peed on them during diaper changes a few times and they laugh at me when I eat because I sound like a Pekingese trying to breathe, but its all love. I'm just glad to be home with my family. I was a sick little man, probably much sicker than Mom and Dad ever realized. If it wasn't for the amazing doctors and nurses in the NICU I might not be as fat and happy as I am right now. I'm going to show you a picture of what my room looked like those first days.

I was hooked into so much stuff that Dad had to take this using the panoramic setting. It's a lot to take in but I want to see if you notice the one thing in the room that is the most important.

Look closer.

It's the sign. All NICU babies get a sign and this is mine. Winnie the Pooh. The nurses randomly decided that I was to have a Winnie the Pooh themed sign and they had no idea that Mom had decorated my room with Winnie the Pooh. That's when Dad said he knew it was all going to be ok. In the words of Ace of Base, he saw the sign and it opened up his eyes. It was going to be fine. 

It took a while to get there, but I'm home, safe and sound in the comfort of my family. They are taking really good care of me. I don't think they could love me any more. It would be inconceivable.