VB Family Updates

posted by Katie

Holy Week in the NICU

As we make our way to end of April, there’s been a recurring refrain – when is Nathan coming home?

When Nathan was born we were told to expect him home around his due date – April 29th – and so we looked at each other and said, it’s going to be interesting Lent. I guess when two churchy people have a preemie right before the church’s most important season of disciplined waiting and preparing begins, the new life of hospital visits and waiting for your baby to come home feels very much like a Lenten discipline. With Nathan’s incredible first weeks of life we thought it really would be just weeks of waiting, and so we prepared ourselves for a long wait.

Then Nathan got sick and we were no longer “just waiting” – we were waiting and praying and terrified. Nathan began getting better a few days before Ash Wednesday. After living at the hospital for a week and feeling completely disconnected for the outside world, one of our first ventures outside of the hospital was to go to an Ash Wednesday service. But by then our lives were no longer in sinc with the life of the church. It was a beautiful service, but as we left the church I could not believe we were walking into the start of Lent. It felt like we’d already had our Lent, we’d already had our Garden of Gethsemane, and with the miraculous reduction of Nathan’s clot and clearing of his infection, we’d had our Easter. Strange that the rest of the church was just getting started on this journey.

And so here we are, Monday of Holy Week. Yesterday we entered Jerusalem with Jesus in triumph and celebration. But now the week gets harder as we make our way to the Cross. And even though we know the end of the story, as we wait for Resurrection we have to go through the suffering.

And I think our journey through the church year and our journey with Nathan are in sinc again. We know the end of the story – no one has any question that Nathan will be coming home to us soon. And we've had a lot to celebrate in the past few weeks. And I still believe we got our Good Friday and Easter last month. But we have to wait and walk through this final week or two or three or four in the hospital.

So what’s left to do? Nathan still only has the stamina for 3 bottles a day – he needs to take 8. We’ve had to take a break from breastfeeding so that we can give him thickened milk to help him develop his swallowing skills. The plan is to slowly introduce breastfeeding back in to his feeding routine, but we don’t know when. He’s still having a few spells a day where he drops his heart rate for no clear reason and he needs to outgrow these. We’ve been warned that these spells can be the final thing that delay a baby going home.

So that’s what we’re waiting for. Happy Holy Week.

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