Monday and Tuesday Melanie was still in the hospital so we were able to spend a lot of time with Nathan down in the NICU. Nathan was removed from the respirator on Monday so we were finally able to hold him once again and Nathan was able to feed from a bottle for the first time (we was being fed by IVs in his umbilical cord before).

Once Melanie was released however, it proved to be more difficult to spend as much time as we had with Nate and we resorted to a tag-team approach of visitation. Between Melanie, my mom and I, we made sure that someone was there to change, hold, and feed Nate every three hours from 5:00 AM to 8:00 PM with Melanie taking on the majority of the visits each day.

We must have put at least 300 miles on our vehicles that week (the hospital is about twenty minutes away) but it was all worth it to be able to hold and spend time with him.

 

NEXT: Weeks 2-4