A Miracle in the Flesh

A NICU mom from one of the Facebook groups I'm a member of posted a wonderful story recently. Her mother went to church to pray for their new preemie addition. She began to cry and a nun approached her to inquire why. She shared the news of the preemie's birth and how scared she was. The nun replied with a big congratulations, exclaiming how excited she was for the family. The grandmother was taken aback. The nun said, "Your family is blessed to experience a miracle in the flesh." 

I love when people ask how Alexander is doing. It's not an easy question to ask on their part, but I appreciate it. It's not always an easy question to answer either. I've been overcome with worry about Alexander's future, what struggles and obstacles he will face due to his prematurity, how we are going to handle his feeding struggles and how we are going to resume a somewhat normal family existence. 

Today I was reminded there is an easy answer - "he's amazing, he's our miracle in the flesh."

We had our first follow up with the University of Iowa and our favorite physician, Dr. Klein. Our team couldn't have been happier with Alexander's progress since coming home. "He's just a normal baby," exclaimed Dr. Klein. I think I was literally floating on air. After weeks of stress about feedings and weight gain, we were told to take it easy a bit. They did increase the calories of his recipe (we mix breast milk with formula and protein powder to make it higher calories), and that should help him decide how much he wants to eat and still get the calories he needs to gain appropriate weight. 

They told us to just enjoy having him home and reminded us to not treat our home like the NICU. Basically quit stressing so much. They even said that it was okay to leave the house - as long as we didn't go to places that were crowded or where people would touch him. They recommend getting netting to place over his car seat so that people don't reach in and spread germs. Him getting sick would be a HUGE set back and could place him back into the hospital. 

He seems to be moving along just fine with this development, but we are still in the early phases.

He was also able to be weaned on his oxygen, so now he's down to 3/4 of a liter of oxygen. We will see how he's able to handle this moving forward. Dr. Klein reminded us that he's the boss and will move at his own pace. We go back in July for our next appointment.

After our appointment, we went up to the NICU to say hi to our favorite nurses and staff. Many were there working today, including our favorite, Mary. It was great to see everyone and fun to show off our fat, little guy. We also stopped into parent group and were able to talk to a bunch of parents who had that same scared, hopeless look I had 6 months ago. I like to believe that showing off our little miracle gave them hope that they too would be going home at some point. 

I know it's not the homecoming we all planned or dreamed about, but a miracle rarely is.