DAY 9 – 31 October:

Michelle: I couldn’t bare the fact that Conor was lying in the NICU, so I planned to spend the day there with him while Mike took care of our daughter. We both visited him after dropping Rachel off at school and the doctor told us Conor did not have neonatal sepsis, but in fact had contracted a virus. He had Coxsackie B virus, which falls within the group of Enteroviruses. It was a virus that was quite prevalent in the environment, and it had been quite a bad year in terms of the number of people affected. While I was concerned that Conor had zero immune system, being a newborn, I also wasn’t overly worried. I mean people got viruses all the time, right? We just had to let it run its course.

The doctors couldn’t do much except offer support to help him recover, but ultimately his body had to fight the virus. So, all we could do was wait and see what happened. It was agonising. Every thought I had was willing him to fight and get better, flitting from worried to ‘it’s gonna be ok’.

I spent the day with him, sang to him, I pumped milk and fed him through the tube (as even the lovely nurses couldn’t get him to take a bottle), I cuddled and held him the whole day. I am so glad I did. When I got back to his room after pumping milk, he was being connected to oxygen. The nurse explained to me that he was having problems breathing. My heart twinged, but as I left him for the evening, I told myself he was in good care and in the best place to help him recover.

Michael:

Spend the day in hospital, chatting to nurses, everything seems to be going ok. One tries to eek out as much information out of everybody as possible, but this becomes overwhelming at times. Thinking back, I can’t really remember much of what was said. I guess just being there with him is what we think is best.

Doing the milk run 3 times a day again, and playing with Rachel in between. Michelle is with Conor most of the day, so we are each where we need to be.