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Meet Joshua






























I am so sorry
I can't tell what you look like
My poor baby boy...

You'll want to look at the accompanying picture before you read the rest of this. This is my first picture with my sweet baby Joshua. The moment we first met face to face (we had met heart to heart many months before). Unfortunately, that first face to face interaction didn't provide much of a view of his sweet little face. Instead, I saw tubes and tape and machinery.

While Cameron was born able to breathe on his own, or "on room air" (which I quickly learned was a medical term never to be taken for granted again), Joshua needed some assistance. Because Joshua's water never broke, he didn't have the chance to practice his breathing exercises on the inside. And because my labor was extremely fast (3 hours start to babies), I was only able to get one steroid shot to help him out. So, sweet baby J was whisked swiftly away from me moments after delivery to get hooked up to CPAP. I remember distinctly the difference in the room's energy in the moments after Joshua emerged from the 30 minutes prior when Cameron made his appearance. Cameron came out squawking, was bundled like a burrito and handed to Daddy. Joshua made a momentary pause next to my head as a nurse allowed me an insufficient glimpse as he headed for the NICU.

Seven hours elapsed before I was able to meet my babies. I was wheeled to Cameron first and after a brief skin to skin visit, I moved on to Joshua. When I arrived in Joshua's nursery I could see his precious little body stuck on its back, arms and legs flailed wide open. Tubing through his isolette's portholes leading to his tiny nostrils, tape across his face to hold the apparatus in place...my mind started swirling. Thoughts of pure love and protective maternal instinct mixed with the slap of reality and guilt that he really did arrive before he was ready to. Could I have kept him in longer? Would he be ok?

There were simple answers here. No and yes. Miraculously, that little fighter made it off CPAP after only 12 hours which pleased the doctors and his parents. He was perfectly healthy and now needed to get bigger. In hind sight, we realize his breathing problems could have been much worse. But had he not been born 8 weeks early, he wouldn't have had to face this obstacle at all.

In this moment, frozen in time, you see a mommy meeting her baby in a way I wish no mommy ever has to again.


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