Aaron's Story

Melissa and I went into the hospital at about 5:00AM on Monday morning… they quickly got her into a pre-operation room where they gave her the epidural and got her ready to go.

We were wheeled to the operation room… where they performed the operation. It wasn’t a long operation. When they were just getting ready to pull Aaron out of Melissa’s belly… they said that I could stand and look over the curtain… so I was able to see his head and eventually his whole gooey light blue body. That was at 7:55AM.

They took him over to the table where they cleaned him off and tried to get him to cry. It took about 45 seconds for him to cry… so there was some concern already about how ready his lungs were for the real world. Eventually he let out this wail… which made everybody a little more at ease.

At that point, as they were stapling Melissa back together… they took Aaron and me down to the scale… where he weighed in at 8 pounds 4 ounces. He measured in at 20 and a quarter inches. The very first observations that I made about my little boy: He had tons of dark hair; He looked very similar to how Emily looked when she was a newborn; He was not as ‘fat’ as I imagined he would be… he had nice chubby cheeks… but I imagined him coming out looking like the ‘Stay Puft’ Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters… but he didn’t at all.

All the family members were able to come into the post-op room where they saw Aaron for the first time. Emily was in my arms and Aaron was in Melissa’s arms the very first time that they met. I think Emily was a little shell-shocked that first meeting… she acted very shy. Emily had been pretending the whole pregnancy that she’s been carrying a baby too. So, Melissa bought her a baby and carriage that we gave to her during the first meeting with Aaron… saying that her baby came out too. That seemed to warm her up a little bit.

Shortly after this, they took the baby to work with him some more. Probably about a half an hour later, we found out that he had been taken up to the special care nursery because he was having a hard time breathing on his own. The next time I saw Aaron, his head was in an oxygen hood… which looked like a huge plastic square box on his head. By Tuesday, he was off the hood, but still had to wear little nasal oxygen thingies. By Wednesday, he was completely off of all oxygen. By Thursday, he was finally allowed to stay with us. We were discharged on Friday.

From early Monday morning to Tuesday evening, Melissa was not able to see Aaron. Which was a terrible thing. Here she was feeling lousy, and she couldn’t see or hold the reward for all this pain she was going through. Really, up through Thursday night… Melissa was only able to see Aaron for a total of about 3 hours throughout each the day.

As far as Melissa’s health is concerned… there was a scare on Tuesday about her blood pressure… but the doctor’s figured that it was pain related and once they got her pain regulated, her blood pressure steadily went down and stayed down.

Emily has taken very well to the new baby. She talks to him… she likes to stroke his face and hair. She calls him ‘beautiful’ and ‘cute.’ I know there have been several funny stories since coming home… but I just can’t think of them right now. She has shown no signs of aggression yet. I think she is struggling with the fact that mommy can hold Aaron, but Emily is still too big to hold until the incision heals a little bit more. All in all though, she has done better with the whole thing than I would have thought. I have been proud of her. We’ll see if it keeps up.

We are still tired… but Aaron’s night’s have started to normalize somewhat. Last night he feed once around 1:00PM, I think… and again at 5:30AM. Not terrible… and I remember Emily being a lot harder on us during the nights. Continue to pray for Melissa as her incision heals. She is still at minor risk for blood clots for another five weeks or so.

In a very small nut-shell, that’s what happened last week. I’m sure I’ll have tons more to write and share as we get to know our little boy more and more…

Melissa wanted me to share this link:

Aaron's Hospital Page