“That’s it! You’re doing it!”
By the end, he had sucked down a mighty eighteen CCs. I stared at the bottle and thought about what to do with the two CCs remaining. Maybe I should drink it. I stood up with the baby and he spit up all over the hospital floor, but no one apart from me had noticed. Quick as I could, I set him back in the isolette, mopped up the mess, and washed out the bottle. By the time the nurse came back, my tracks were covered.
“How’d he do?” she asked.
“Twenty CCs. No barf!”
“That’s great!”
I texted my wife that I managed to get the IV out and she texted back, “SHUT UP. HOW’D YOU DO THAT?” I exalted in working my magic. I had never won an argument with a doctor before in my life. It made me feel like a goddamn superhero.
Over the next few days, the barfing went down. The baby began to take all his bottles for real, without me doctoring the evidence. Twenty CCs became thirty. Thirty became forty. Forty became forty-two, then forty-three, then holy shit, get to fifty already, kid. Every time he hit a new feeding plateau, I walked out of the NICU pumping my fist, screaming out “FUCK YEAH!” at the top of my lungs if no one was around. They removed the cannula from his nose, leaving him free to breathe on his own. Outside the NICU, in the lonely white hall leading back to the reception area, there was a series of photographs of the hospital’s annual NICU reunions: hundreds of happy parents with now-healthy babies waving gaily to the camera, having forgotten all about their time inside the hospital walls. I wanted to go there. I wanted to get to THAT. Now we were close. You’re doing it, boy. Don’t stop fighting.
? ? ?
We came in one morning and they had moved the baby over to a lower-risk part of the NICU, a section for babies who would be going home sooner rather than later. He was out of the isolette now, lying in a simple plastic tub bassinet. The night nurse had written our son’s name out on a green index card and taped it to the side of the tub and when I saw it I started to cry. I remembered the moment he was born in the operating room, hearing him cry and knowing he wasn’t going to be stillborn. The attending nurse that day asked me his name, and when I said the name out loud his name became a promise—a blood oath to dedicate the rest of my life to keeping him alive and happy. Now he was here, on the verge of being discharged. Alive. Happy.
My wife sat with him in the recliner and fed him fifty CCs straight, no chaser. The feeding tube was gone. A day later, we watched the nurse unhook him from the heart rate monitor and now he was free, 100 percent wireless. No more IVs. No more heel pricks. No more nurses. He was just a baby now, not unlike any other.
For his discharge day, we brought along our other two kids, who had visited the NICU on occasion only to end up pushing all the buttons and demanding to go to the cafeteria for chicken fingers. I pictured our walk out of the NICU as something wonderfully poignant. I had the final movie reel playing in my head. Everyone would get along for the baby’s sake and we would stroll out of the hospital as a loving family unit.
But then the two older kids fought over who got to strap the baby in.
“I WANNA DO IT!” my daughter screamed.
“NO, I WANNOO!” said the boy.
“Listen,” I said. “There are other babies here and they’re trying to sleep because this place sucks. Besides, this baby is very delicate and I don’t want either of you killing him by accident. I will let you screw up everything else today, including the pizza.”
“NO!” they replied in unison.
“Oh god dammit.”
My wife pulled out a camera. “Let’s try to get a picture.”
I held the camera out and snapped an attempted Christmas card photo while we crowded around the baby carrier and the two older children jockeyed for a position closest to the baby’s head.
“Will you two get away from his head? It’s got soft spots!” I said.
“Drew,” my wife said, “keep it down.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. This isn’t how I pictured this moment.”
“It’s never gonna be perfect. Let’s just go home.”
So we did. After twenty-seven days in the hospital, our son finally came home.
? ? ?
A few weeks later, I was drinking wine after dinner (no driving!) and walking around with the baby strapped to my body in a Bj?rn. I loved having the baby in the Bj?rn because I could pretend there was an alien popping out of my stomach. The girl and I had discovered that the baby liked really loud music. At least, I think the baby liked it. If he didn’t like it, at least the music drowned out his protests. She ran up to my computer and demanded I put on the loudest shit possible.
“The baby wants to hear the music!” she screamed.
So I cranked it up and started dancing around, the baby’s arms and legs swinging freely in the air. The boy came into the room and started hopping around.
“Is that your pee-pee dance?” I asked him.
“No, I’m just dancing, Deddy!”