This was mine. My second child decided he wanted to arrive 3 1/2 weeks early this past March, so while he wasn’t extremely early he was still early enough that he was kept in the NICU for 13 days because he developed apnea and he was on an apnea monitor at home for nearly 3 months. The nurses in the Special Care nursery were amazing! They understood that I wanted to be there for my baby as much as I could, but that I also had a 20 1/2 month old at home to take care of too. Every feeding time that I was there for we nursed first, and then he was given any pumped milk that we had there for him (either from home, or pumped there at the hospital).

Even though he ended up being diagnosed as Failure to Thrive at 4 months old, we still managed to nurse until a month and a half ago when he was just over 7 months old. We made it more than twice the length of time his older brother got breastmilk because gall bladder attacks dried up my supply by the time my oldest was 12 1/2 weeks.

And just before Halloween there was a Baby Homecoming party at the hospital where both of my boys were born and we got to see some of our Special Care nurses again, and they were so excited to see just how well he’s doing now.