Life in the nicu- part one

First of all, we were in the nicu with the girls for 9 weeks (Caroline) and 12 weeks (Josie). Looking back now, I wonder " who the heck were those people and how in the hell did they get through that?" I now know that I was living in a God fog! Our God is so good that he never allowed me to doubt his complete control of our situation! When we first started to get acclimated to nicu life, the staff would tell us of the roller coaster of emotions that we could expect. Of course, we would never quite know until we actually experienced it for ourselves. Those emotions included happiness, sadness, relief, confusion, frustration, anger, joy, sorrow, helplessness, exhaustion, and complete love! One of the moments that come to mind ( at this time) are Caroline's heart surgery: Caroline was 23 days old when they told us that her PDA valve, which had closed earlier with meds, had reopened. Our only option for successful treatment was for them to perform a PDA ligation surgery. We were told that she would be transferred to kosair downtown for the surgery and that they would go through her back laproscopically through her ribs and tie off the valve surgically. Wow! To think about this procedure now blows my mind. A 23 day old baby who weighed right at 3 lbs going in for heart surgery? Albeit a "minor" surgery in their eyes, still a heart procedure! But for some reason ( my God fog) I was fine and knew that this is what needed to be done for my baby. The surgery was successful and we were back at suburban, but not until after a 5-day stint at kosair. We were relieved to be back with the staff we had grown to know and love and our sweet sister Josie.