You Know You've Been a NICU Parent for More than a Month When...

Keeping with the theme of how time moves so slowly (or ridiculously fast depending on how you look at it) tonight we started thinking about all of the new knowledge we've acquired in the past 5 weeks of being a parent with two babies in the NICU. Seriously, we learn something new every day.

You know you’ve been a NICU parent for over a month when…

• You have the phone number for St. Joseph’s Family Care NICU engrained into your memory.
• You have the route from home to hospital memorized and have stopped using the GPS to get there months ago.
• You are on a first name basis with multiple nurses (and know who’s on the day, afternoon and night shifts).
• The nurses (and doctors) realize how big of a Brewers fan Hope and Grace’s dad is and engage in long conversations with him about baseball.
• You start thinking about turning the high and low oxygen saturation beeps into some creative hip-hop beats.
• You speak in sentences frequently using terms like desats, blood gasses, CPAP levels, gavage tubes, PDA, apneas and bradycardias and know exactly what each of these things are.
• If your baby spits up a large amount, you refer to it as an emesis.
  
• “How did she stool?” is among your frequently asked questions.
• Green becomes your least favorite color (even if you’re a Packer fan). (note: "green goo" from the stomach indicates problems digesting, so this is a bad thing)
  
• ET no longer stands for Extra Terrestrial (it refers to the entertrachial tube used for breathing support).
• A 15 cc feeding of milk sounds like Grace is taking down a Thanksgiving feast, (even though it the equivalent of 1 tablespoon).
• Washing your hands every few minutes becomes the norm, not the exception.
• Full term babies look enormous, even if in reality they are only 6 pounds.
• You are used to seeing your kids hooked up to a myriad of wires and cords.
  
• You learn how important it is to “tolerate cares” and “tolerate feeds.”
• You cross your fingers every three hours and pray for “no residual.”
  
• Holding your babies, even for a mere 20 minutes becomes the absolute, positive, highlight of your day and something you live the other 23 hours 40 minutes for.