A few people have asked what life in the NICU is like. It's a fair question because only five people are allowed access to Charlotte, aside from her nurses and doctors. Those five people would be me and Emily and then we are allowed to put four people on a list who can also come into the NICU with us. These four people are allowed to look, but can't touch. We put Emily's mom and her sister Jessica, and Jessica's husband, Ben, on the list.
So we have a fourth name we can add to the list. I am willing to sell that vacancy to the highest bidder. But be forewarned, I've got this thing and it's effing golden. And I'm not giving it up for effing nothing.
So what is Charlotte's world like? In a word, limited. She spent the first three days of her life on the south side of the NICU where the most fragile kids stay, and then when she moved off the CPAP tubes in her mouth, she graduated to the north side of the NICU.
She gets out of her crib for feedings, to be bathed once or twice a week, and to be weighed. Otherwise, she hangs out in her crib. This may not sound like much, but she is certainly a lot more active than her age-matched, in utero peers. So here is a tour of Charlotte's world.
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| This is the room Emily and I stay in in between feedings. Emily stayed here every night until a few days ago. |
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How we typically pass the time: surfing the web, reading, watching TV, talking to visitors. |
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To the left is the nursing station and to the right is a hallway leading to the infamous room 211 where Emily stayed during her bedrest. That door is the secured entrance to the NICU, where Charlotte lives. We can bring her up to the window for people to look at her. |
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| Charlotte's "room." Curtains for walls, sterile bin for a crib, and a oxygen saturation monitor for an entertainment center. |
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| Charlotte's kitchen. Whatever milk she doesn't take from a bottle or nursing is fed to her through an NG tube via this giant syringe. The machine it is hooked up to delivers the milk at a set pace. |
