About 3 weeks ago, one of the NICU volunteer photographers came around to the bedsides of different babies and offered to take photos. I just received them and boy was it a trip down memory lane. While I’ve all but forgotten about our time in the NICU, it was nice to see such beautiful photos and have a stark reminder of how far we’ve come with Ben. Ben was 2 weeks and 2 days old in these photos.
{During his stay in the NICU Ben had four different rooms. This is a photo of his first room down on the second floor, which is the lower level acuity floor. He shared this room with three other babies.}{Changing his diaper was quite difficult because he had so many wires all over the place. At the most, he had 4 monitoring wires {heart rate, oxygen, breathing, temperature}, his PICC line {deep IV}, the feeding tube in his nose, his oxygen sensor on his foot, his HUGS tag {to make sure no one stole him} and his ID bracelet.}{Precious feet with all the wires…}{I’m happy to say that Ben has already outgrown this outfit! He was completely swimming in it when this photo was taken.}
{I bought this mountain necklace not long after I found out I was pregnant with Ben. It didn’t symbolize anything at the time, other than that I love the mountains. Eventually I realized I wore it every day when I was hospitalized before Ben’s birth and I grew to associate this necklace with Ben and his strength, plus his nursery has a mountain-theme, so now it’s my Ben necklace.}{His little face has filled out SO much since this day!}{This is a perfect photo summing up my days in the NICU, except not all of them were spent with a smile on my face – I sure did try!}{It’s great to have a reminder of how Ben’s life started, though I don’t intend on coming back to these photos very often!}
