Skin to Skin

From that first hold we jumped right into skin to skin, also known as Kangaroo Care. The research on this is amazing http://www.prematurity.org/baby/kangaroo.html. Skin to skin is when you strip the baby down to just a diaper and place them on your chest inside your shirt and just hold them for hours. The link above list all the wonderful benefits on it. Once we were given the okay to do skin to skin we set up a schedule. Everyday Brytt got skin to skin with someone in our family for a minimum of 1 hour twice a day. Usually Robin or I would be there Sundays which were his days off from work. Then we would go back home and my mom would do Monday and Tuesday days, my mother in law or aunt would do Monday nights. I would come back and do Tuesday nights, Wednesday & Thursday afternoon and night then go home Friday and my mom, mother in law, aunts or cousins would take care of her until we got back on Sunday and started it over again. I loved doing the nights because it was so quiet in the NICU and I would hold her from shift change at 8:00pm until 2 or 3 in the morning.

First Cuddling...

came when she was 13 days old and how sweet it was. It was so hard leaving the hospital without a baby. It was hard not being able to hold her. So when my mom and I went in on December 8th and they asked me if I wanted to hold her it was the most amazing thing. Up until now she was on a special vent called an oscilator, which was way more easier on fragile preemie lungs then a traditional vent. Although it was possible to hold her while on the oscilator, it was difficult and she was still so fragile. But once she was on the regular vent it was easier to move her. It seemed to take forever to just get her ready. You have to unhook this, move that, tape this down. Bundle her in warmed blankets because she couldn't maintain her body temperature on her own and we were taking her off the warming table. Then when they moved her they had to take her off the life support for a few seconds.


I didn't get to hold her for very long but it was oh so worth it!