He Takes My Heart With Him

His First Moments

My husband and I had long decided that he would stay with our baby after birth. He would go with our little guy wherever our little guy went. I made him promise, over and over, that he would not leave our baby. It was overwhelming how important it was to me. I would tell my husband how our baby needed us and, because I couldn't be with him, my husband must be. My husband promised each time. He never placated me or told me we had been over this before. He would just promise me, again.

So, when our baby boy was moved up to the NICU, Daddy was with him. My husband followed him through the unit, to the end room, where our baby's incubator would stay. He stayed with him as nurses and neonatalogists studied our son and connected him to numerous wires and started an IV. He hovered in the background as they monitored our baby's vitals and discussed the growth on our son's back. He reached his large hand through the holes in the incubator and stroked our son's tiny hand. He never left him.

He stayed there, and was there still, when the nurse was finally able to bring me to my son. Two hours after I gave birth, I was wheeled upstairs to sit by my little boy's isolette and wonder at him. To smile at how beautiful he was and to pray while stroking his smooth arm.

And so we were there, together. A mom and a dad and our son. A little family, amidst the business, the brightness, the clinicalness of the NICU. Through the locked double doors, down the long hallway, the last room on your left, the first isolette.