26 Weeker

Have A Preemie, It’s Such A Deal

/ bperica / 4 Comments

I am here to be honest with you. Having a preemie is such a deal both in cost and effort. Think of all the deals you have come across in your life. Think of the deals you expect to encounter in the future. Let your imagination run wild. I really doubt the deal you have in mind will come even close to being as good a deal as I am about to share with you.

1. Delivery is really fast. You don’t even have time to anticipate it. One night, you’ll be at home watching TV (in our case, I was trying to watch the latest episode of True Detective on HBO), and you will be truly concerned about everyday tasks, leaning over to your spouse and saying, “Oh gosh, we still have to clean the kitchen.” Then the pain will come. You’ll make a smart decision to go to the hospital to get some drugs or something and be sent home. So, still, having a baby won’t even be on your radar. But then the water breaks and well, you know something is going to happen. You’re not quite sure what. And then a few hours later you have a kid. Very little pain. Lots of drugs. A lot of very nice people working to help you deliver this baby as quickly and as painlessly as possible. And it is. The scar will heal up very nicely.

2. No third trimester. “Wow, killer deal!” You might say. Well, you are spot on. From what I hear, that third trimester is just a pain in the ass, or more like the lower back. Fatigue? Ha, you won’t even get to the worst of it. Frequent urination? You’re safe. A two pound baby does not make you urinate more. Heartburn? Okay, you might still get this if you have a preemie, but it’s not what you think. It’s just because you had tacos with the hot salsa on them, not because you are growing a human being. Swelling? Nope. You’ll be able to wear your wedding ring right up to delivery. Weight gain? Are you freaking kidding me? As soon as you develop the slightest baby bump you’ll be hours away from delivery, saved from the expand-a-pants, saved from the waddle, the stretch marks, and the need to have a whole different wardrobe for that third trimester.

3. Best babysitting in the world. As soon as your baby arrives, NICU nurses, will be with your baby 24/7 until the baby leaves the NICU. The earlier the baby, the more days you’ll get this amazing babysitting at a relatively low cost. You can still go out for dinner. You can go home to sleep. In addition to the nurses there are many other professionals checking in on your baby, making sure she is comfortable and developing as expected. You might be a little stressed about leaving your baby in the NICU at first, but, oddly, you get used to it. You still need to enjoy your free time before you have a baby at home. You weren’t expecting to have a baby this soon. You had three more months. Take them. The NICU team has you covered.

4. The lighter your baby the better. Truly, if you have a really small baby, you just qualified for all sorts of assistance regardless of your income. You will learn about supplemental security income. You’ll get a check from the Feds once a month that has to be used on baby things. Easy enough. And then for some reason you’ll get a little bonus check when your baby leaves the hospital. Sort of like the Feds just saying, “Hey, congratulations! And thanks for paying all your taxes all those years. This is how we roll. We actually do some good stuff with the money you give us. Here’s some back.” Then, if you’re lucky enough to live in Colorado, your little, teeny, tiny baby qualifies for at home physical therapy and occupational therapy visits. Three times a month, they come to you, assess your baby, tell you what the baby needs to do better, tell you where the baby might be a little ahead, and, this is all at no extra cost to you. This time it is like the state saying, “Thanks for paying your taxes. You struck gold with this little girl and now we are going to pay people to help you with her development.”

5. People give in emergencies. The more traumatic the experience, the more people you will hear from, the more flowers you will receive, the more food will show up at your doorstep, the more aid in your mailbox, the more touching notes you will receive from people you’ve met once or have never met before, the more baby clothes you will receive, and the more diaper cakes you’ll be gifted. People will feel for you. They’ll fork over some really excellent gifts and meals. Truly, what a steal.

6. Having a preemie could very well be cheaper than having a full-term baby. When you have a preemie, she needs a place to stay. These places are called neonatal intensive care units or NICUs. A night at our NICU costs as much as the Peninsula Suite at the Peninsula, Chicago, or almost $9,000 a night. Multiplied by 109. No one is going to stick you with that bill. Trust me. In fact, when your bill arrives you could end up paying less than 1% of your total stay. I mean, if you have very solid insurance, you might just pay .007% of your total hospital bill. Double-O-Seven.

7. After hours visiting at the hospital. You know, typically when you show up at our hospital after 8 you have to sign in and say who you are going to visit. They give you a sticker that you immediately throw in the trash. What a waste. It’s a real hassle. You don’t want to stop and talk with anyone, you’re going to see your baby for crying out loud. Worry not. You’ll live at the hospital. After you’re stopped once or twice, you’ll just look over at the security desk when you next enter the hospital after hours and you’ll get in with the head nod you always see guys giving each other.

8. You get to write about it and people will read. And maybe, after you’ve gone through all this and cried a thousand times for your child’s life and watched her vital signs plummet to numbers that you just associate with death, you’ll be able to find some humor in the whole experience and put a spin on it like I just did.

Stroller Love

/ bperica / 3 Comments

Remember when BOB strollers were cool? Yeah, well, in this household the BOB fell short, quite literally, right from the start because I am 6’9″. There’s no point in asking if you’ve tried pushing a BOB stroller when you’re 81 inches tall because you haven’t. I’ll just tell you. It is freaking miserable, like walking around bent at the waist, stretching your hamstrings wherever you go.

BOB strollers have a great reputation, so when I first tried pushing one in a store I was so discouraged because I mistakingly thought BOBs were the pinnacle of strollerdom and if this stroller wasn’t going to do (and it clearly wasn’t) then what’s left?

Let me tell you what’s left…the just-as-short Graco strollers, the Eddie Bauer BOB look-a-like strollers (EB, really? I thought you learned to not branch out after the Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer Edition, but after a quick Google, it appears the EB edition is still a thing…how?), Britax (practical, a little taller, but Jony Ive needs to redesign them because they’ve been hit with the ugly stick so many times their wheels have two spokes…what were they thinking?), and Chicco (which just seems like a mashup of Graco and Britax). I could go on, but you get the point, right? All of these strollers, despite their own unique flaws, are all too short.

All hope was lost until we walked into the Right Start, sort of a posh baby store, and an actual employee listened to what we were looking for and walked us over to this beautiful stroller she was calling the Uppababy something, I didn’t catch the name right away because she said it right at the moment I looked at the price tag. While laughing in my head at the absurdity of paying that much for a stroller, I obliged the employee and took it for a little spin, but right before I strolled off, the employee reached to the center of the handle, gripped, and pulled. The handle raised a few inches higher off the ground. It was love at first step. My hands didn’t have to go down to my knees to push this thing. My feet didn’t hit the rear axle of the stroller because it’s not there, leaving plenty of room for my full-stride with size 15 shoes. The Uppababy Vista moved like butter around the store. Each and every step was a little more painful because I was falling more and more in love with the stroller but knew we weren’t going to IMG_3720drop that kind of cash on such a ride.

After that initial trip to the Right Start, we kept looking for strollers. We pushed around cheaper models at Target and Babies R Us. We pushed around much more expensive models (didn’t know that was possible, but makes sense, the celebrity parent needs something to push around) at a boutique stroller store. But always, the Uppababy Vista was there, lurking, pulling us back to its many wonderful features. However, it was always the height that appealed to me. Other bonuses, like the included bassinet, seemed unnecessary. The brand name, Uppababy, even bothered me. It was too pretentious sounding and it looks like it was missing an umlaut.

We kept resisting, but the stroller search was leading us nowhere. Before we formally spoke about it, I think we both knew the Uppababy Vista was going to be ours. It was inevitable.

We eventually were ready to buy and then we received an incredibly generous gift certificate to the Right Start from friends we met in Milwaukee. This made the purchase easier to stomach. And so it was, a week after I made a few fast clicks on the Right Start’s website, the Uppababy arrived at our doorstep and I immediately assembled it. Since it was April 14th, the stroller sat in the living room for a month like a piece of precious furniture that no one could sit in.

Months later, I can’t imagine having a different stroller. The cost of the stroller, even without the gift certificate, would have been worth it. Never once have we regretted the purchase. That unnecessary bassinet became indispensable. The car seat attachment beautiful. The height always right. However, I still think Uppababy is missing an umlaut.

Real Time Update

/ bperica / 1 Comment

I haven’t given an update about London’s health and growth in a while. Since we just saw the doctor today, now’s a good time. 

London is just over 7 months old now. Her corrected age is just over 4 months. 

She weighs 17 lbs. That a girl. 

She is just shy of 27 inches in length. 

Last week, she had her final ROP eye exam because her eyes have fully vascularized. I am so glad I don’t have to watch another one of these exams.

As of today, we can have her off of oxygen whenever she is awake. She will need oxygen when sleeping at night or napping during the day for quite a while still, but this is huge progress. 

When we were sitting in the doctor’s office today, the pediatric dietitian looked at London and said, “Are you sure she is a 26 weeker?”

A few of you have been asking about the enterovirus scare going around Colorado and much of the Midwest. We aren’t taking any extra special measures for now. An employee at Children’s did tell us that they aren’t allowing inpatient visitors at Children’s right now and that many people have postponed their child’s outpatient appointment. London is not supposed to have contact with babies or kids. This is the way it has been since we brought her home so no changes there. As always, we have plenty of hand sanitizer around the house. I think we’ll be just fine. 

London will get a standard flu shot, but she will also receive Synagis for RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). She’ll be getting all of these within the next month, staggered of course. 

One last thing, if you’re planning on holding London and visiting with her at any point this flu season, you just have to get a flu shot. No flu shot, no London time. Flu shot, London time. Pretty easy decision if you ask me. 

Happy to share this update on London’s progress!

The Museum of London

/ bperica / 3 Comments

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I have a sneaky suspicion that throughout her life London will be the recipient of a few gifts with a British theme to them. If we were going to easily tire of this, we wouldn’t have named our daughter London. Those gifts started arriving right away, one of them directly from London itself. A friend of ours was in the UK when London was born and brought back a gift from the Museum of London. When I saw the bag the gift came in I knew exactly where I was going to place it…on one of the walls of London’s pod. There it stayed for 109 days. As the weeks and months passed, there were more signs on the walls in London’s pod. Of course we have them all now at home, but I took pictures of all of them before we cleaned out London’s NICU pod. Here they are…

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London’s first footprints with her birthweight. There’s no perspective here, but those feet are the size of my thumb. Oh, and all these signs were made by the nurses. That is something I never expected about our NICU stay, to have on-demand artists to create signs commemorating London’s growth and month birthdays and even holidays.

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London’s first holiday was Valentine’s Day. We brought cards in for her. I bought a card for mom from London. Just looking at the card from London made mom cry. Forget about reading it.

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Born on January 30th, we just had to select a day at the end of February to be London’s one-month birthday. We took handprints and footprints that day and a family picture. London’s hands that day were about the size of my thumb.

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By March 8, London was 6 lbs 1oz shy of my birthweight.

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These footprints, although small, looked like Bigfoot had made them when you saw them side by side with London’s birth footprints. Unbelievable. Also, had London gone full term, we were told her birthweight would have been around 9 lbs 2 oz, the weight on her three-month birthday.

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Lastly, one more sign made just in time for London’s discharge day from the NICU. She gained 9 lbs in the NICU and grew 6 inches. By her fourth month there, London could have eaten some of her NICU neighbors for dinner. She was the Queen Bee, unrelenting in her cuteness and exponential growth chart.

Summa cum laude.