Yesterday we celebrated my son’s 5th month. His name’s Matthias Orion, his second name of course after Orion Pax, Optimus Prime’s real name hehe :)
In my previous post I shared that my son wasn’t breathing when he was born. He was actually blue already and could not breath even when they tried manually pumping air so they had to intubate him, meaning they had to hook him up to a machine that would pump him with air so he could breath. The doctor told me that she wasn’t sure why this happened, it could be because my wife had an extended labor, or because my son had already swallowed a lot of amniotic fluid, we weren’t sure. He also acquired pneumonia, again, while the doctor’s cannot pinpoint the cause they say it could probably be because he has already swallowed some amniotic fluid or it is a side effect of being intubated. Almost always, once a tube is placed inside an infant, it will almost always result in an infection which basically meant that the procedure to save my son caused him to get sick as well.
I knew my son would live, even though there were times when I felt really hopeless because of the endless tests and procedures they had to do to make sure that he was ok. I knew that he would live because he was big, and also because even though he was sick he was very active there. Of course at that time I did not know what would really happen to him but I have resigned myself to accept what God would give me and I was really hoping that what my heart knew, that Ri would live, would be what God would give me. I was in a state of complete surrender to the Lord and even though it was tiring and painful, knowing that deep in my heart I knew that God would take care of us placed me in a position where I could do what I needed to do without breaking down.
The hardest part was telling my wife who just came out of the operating room that our son was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. That almost broke my heart... but my wife is strong and she was able to take it. We stood together in prayer and asked God to give us what we wanted.
I almost cried when I visited Ri on my birthday and he was still there at the NICU. I did not celebrate my birthday then, it didn’t matter but I was happy to see my boy that evening.
Needless to say, after two weeks we were able to bring our baby home. The whole hospital stay was expensive and thank God we actually were a bit prepared financially on top of some help we got from our relatives so the whole thing wasn’t as stressful as it could have been.
I never really had the time to process everything that happened until today. What I do know is that I cried so much during the 3rd night that my boy was home while I was carrying him so he could sleep. My wife was sleeping and I sort of allowed myself to cry. At that time I remembered how hard the past two weeks were, how worried I was and how I wanted to panic, scream and just shout at everything because not only was I worried about my boy I was also worried for my wife. I was exhausted, frustrated and angry and all I just thank God that He allowed me to hold everything in during those two weeks because I needed to be strong for my family.
I finally allowed myself to cry because I knew that the whole ordeal was over and we can start to finally take care of our boy ourselves. It hurt so much to see the nurse cleaning him when all I wanted to do was to be able to change his diapers and I was not allowed to touch him. It felt really good to cry... specially when I promised myself that I would once everything’s over. I’m not crazy, I do not intend to bottle everything inside of me and that’s my secret to keeping things together... I make sure I cry when I need to and I rest when I have to.
So Ri is sleeping soundly, but its already 3 amand around this time he starts feeding. My wife takes care of that but sometimes I’m able to wake up and I try to assist her. When I look at them I feel happy, its the kind of happiness that’s different from everything else that I’ve felt and I’m just thankful to the Lord for keeping my boy alive and giving us the chance to have him in our lives.
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