DAY 3

The night before, I had sent Logan home to get some real sleep. Poor Logan had been sleeping on the chair/couch thing that they have for the dads that really just looks like a really hard cot. Not only that, I was waking him up every couple of hours to help me get out of bed to go to the bathroom, get my pump ready, then walk Dawson's milk down to the NICU. Before that night I didn't realize that he was also taking advantage of Dawson's care times as well. So Logan was being a baby hog and getting to change Dawson's diaper and take his temperature, which before I sent him home that night I didn't even realize there were set times for that!

Wednesday morning, probably around 5 a.m. I walked down by myself because I was going to see Dawson and hand deliver his milk and change his diaper. While I was down there I remember talking to the nurse and she said every thing had gone great through the night. I was ecstatic. This would mean I would get to hold him AGAIN this afternoon.

We couldn't wait to get to doctor rounds that morning. He was doing awesome so maybe we would get to try to feed him a bottle on top of holding him?! Things could only get better.

Things didn't get better. In fact, more problems were coming to light. I just stared at the doctor as he told us that the nurse thought she had seen signs of a seizure in the night. I thought there was no way. I had visited my baby in the middle of the night. Everything was fine. He was fine. That afternoon he was to be hooked up to monitors for his brain and have a video camera on him to watch his movements.

But that wasn't all.

He had another chest x-ray to look at his lungs and within the past 48 hours there had been no improvement. Even worse-at some point his collar bone had broke. This x-ray also showed that his bones were incredibly brittle. They were going to do x-rays of his lower half to make sure all of those bones were ok.

Those two things meant one thing to me at that moment: I would not be holding my baby today.

The doctor would not tell us his suspicions of what kind of condition we were looking at with Dawson at this point. He just kept saying we would most likely have to wait 4-6 weeks for the chromosome tests to return to find out if he had a chromosome syndrome.

Craving something to be normal in my life, I sent Logan to go get Emmy and to take her to dance class. After she went to dance class I wanted her to come see me, because if I couldn't snuggle Dawson then I was going to snuggle Emmy.

After he left I made my way back down to the NICU. Unfortunately I had walked in on them hooking the monitors to his head for the EEG. That was the moment it became real to me. I never imagined that my baby would have to have an EEG.

I took no pictures on Day 3. I was hoping it would be a day I could forget.

As I sat there watching my baby sleep and cry, I wished more than anything that I could take all of his discomfort away. I wished he didn't have to have his head wrapped. I wished he didn't have to lay on and around all the wires. I wished he could stop being poked and prodded and having to get new IVs all of the time. And I wished the machines would all stop beeping at him.

We did a lot of praying that day. Praying that all of the tests would come back that he was fine. Praying that this would be but a fleeting moment in his earthly journey so that he could live a long and happy and healthy life.