Day Sixteen

According to our daily call to the step down nursery, Jaxon has retained or gained weight overnight. He has been eating consistently and is now up to about 30 ml per feeding. Once he gets to 40 ml of feeding by bottle or breast, he should be one more step to coming home. He’s pooping like a champ – assuming that there are contests for pooping.

Last night, after Lara spent several hours feeding him, changing him, and looking at him, I was able to see him. While he’s lost weight since his birth eight days ago, he looks like he’s grown a few centimeters. His caloric intake is turning the corner, taking more than he’s burning up. Cool.

My goal yesterday was to wash him for the first time but because someone called out, the nurse in charge of my kid nixed that idea. I did get to change him and feed him. Jaxon was significantly unhappy about me checking his temperature under his arm and me trying to take off his straitjacket of a swaddle to take it. His arms and legs avoided my hands like an agent dodging bullets in The Matrix. Little did I know that I could just pull the shirt down from his neck. Doh.

Changing his diaper was easy, despite the wires around his body and the feeding tube in his nose. I’ve done it a couple times now and once you get the basics, it’s pretty straightforward. I look forward to him pooping on my like he has nearly everyone else. I guess he’s just saving a big poo for me.

Bottle feeding is a great feeling, I get to hold him and and help him reach his eating goals. I would hold him upright to burp him, apply firm taps on his back. It feels so strange firmly tapping the back of a week old child in a NICU when parts like his skull are still soft. You are afraid of breaking him but infants are remarkably resilient. Despite Jaxon’s best efforts, his nurse had to complete the feeding through the nostril. This is a necessary evil but there is something unsettling about a week old child being fed this way. The other day, when he was 3 days old, he didn’t like the tube either and removed it him self. So gangsta.

After feeding, I held him. I was mostly in a quite space, in the moment with a dozing little person. There was another father in the room who, and I feel bad about saying this, was a caricature. By that I mean he would say things that father may say on some bad medical drama. He removed his mask to take a video of him saying strangely scripted phrases that one might hear on General Hospital. I’m sorry, but as a father now, I’m going to take out my gavel and judge like Judy.

During part of my quiet time, I spoke with the nurse caring for him. She was an older woman who worked only weekends. I proceeded to mimic her actions as she feed and cared for another infant, because I’m not an idiot. She said that she was so happy to see a father who isn’t afraid of handling a baby. She mentioned that her husband, who is a physics professor wasn’t as quick on the uptake with there children, one of which is getting his PhD. in physics. Was bashful and sheepishly dismissive because that’s what I do. That said, it was nice to hear that, coming from a trained professional and apparently successful parent, that I have some innate, basic child handling skills. We’ll see how that goes.

I spend a lot of time waiting at the hospital. It’s harder than one would think but has some benefits. It gives me time to write this daily dispatch to family and friends, Lara, or some would-be publisher who thinks this is amazing and is willing send an armored truck to our door. The real audience – the most likely audience – is my future self and future Jaxon. I’m going to forget how tired I am, how tired Lara is, how she and I are sometimes frustrated at each other and with ourselves as we come to grips with the trepidation we have about taking care of our light.

The emotional weight this, along with the constant threat of coronavirus, is a thing. In the pre-COVID universe, even with a premature infant, one could imagine having healthy, trusted people visit, just watch the baby for a couple of hours while the parents slumber. That’s not in the cards. I’m sure we’ll all laugh one day and say that all of that worry was for nothing, things will turn out right.

That’s all we have right now, hope. Things happened this way because they had to happen this way.

Thank you all.