The day finally came that we were allowed to actually hold Zoey. Talk about excited, we were ecstatic but also super nervous. How could you not be when you are holding a baby less than 2 lbs. And we had been told not to rub her because we could rip her skin! But she was our baby and we were getting to hold her. Nick and I decided that because I was still in a lot of pain and on meds he would get to hold her. He was over the moon. Then came the realization that we could not hold Zoey the way you would normally hold a newborn.
This was the day that we learned about Kangaroo Care. It was also the day we learned to love Kangaroo Care. Just for clarification, Kangaroo Care is skin to skin contact. It is said to help premature babies continue to develop. It was also crucial for Zoey because she couldn’t regulate her body temperature yet. Due to her size and struggles with body temperatures, we held Zoey 45 minutes at a time. It was the best 45 minutes of our day. And this was Nick’s first time.
It took 3 people to get Zoey situated for Kangaroo Care. We had to carefully lower Zoey onto Nick’s chest with him fully clothed. This doesn’t sound too hard but she was hooked up to all sorts of monitors so she had wires all over. Plus we were terrified of hurting her. She finally gets settled and Nick is just soaking up all of the time he gets to cuddle with her.
After a few minutes he gets a strange look on his face. I asked him what’s wrong, immediately worried that Zoey is hurt. But no she’s fine. He says “I think she peed on me”. I smile and am thankful that I wasn’t holding her. Wrong of me, I know but come on, you would be excited not to be peed on too. The nurse realized something was going on and had come over to see what was going on. We had grabbed towels to clean up the pee because Nick is still holding Zoey and can’t really move. We lift his shirt and realize that nope she didn’t pee on him, she pooped on him. The yuckiest poop babies have meconium (looks like black tar) was all over Nick’s stomach. I can’t help it. I’m laughing really hard at this time, which hurt my incision so much. Seriously, I had tears streaming down my face.
So we divide and conquer. Nick is holding Zoey and keeping her secure. The nurse is watching vitals and her temperature to make sure she is good. I am trying to clean the poop off of Nick’s stomach. Well meconium is hard to clean off. It wasn’t as simple as one wipe and all good. This was one of those situations that’s required soap and a shower. All we had were baby wipes so I was trying for a hot minute to clean him up. Then the nurse says Zoey temperature is dropping because of his lifted shirt. Nick says “Just leave it. Leave the poop. She needs to get warm.” I lower his shirt and wrap another blanket over them (and the poop). Bare in mind, we have to hold her for 45 minutes at a time and this was within the first 10 minutes. Nick sat there holding her for more than half an hour with poop on his stomach because her temperature was dropping.
When we finally got Zoey back into her isolete Nick scrubbed the meconium off of his stomach. He looked at me and said “I need a shower and to never see this shirt again.”