DADVENTURE: My Sweden, My Preemie

I sometimes wonder why I’ve kind of gone off the whole deep end with parenting – why I decided to leave a perfectly good teaching job for this whole goofy DadLabs interweb video show.  It became a lot clearer to me last week.

I was in DC, sitting in an auditorium in the basement of the Swedish Embassy (or House of Sweden as the staff prefers) listening to pioneering neonatologist Av Fanaroff of Cleveland’s Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital talking about parent/baby bonding when the light went on in my head.  It all boils down to Kangaroo Care.

The day did not start out as one that seemed ripe for epiphanies.  We almost missed the event we came to DC to see.

I was convinced that we needed to shoot some “b-roll” or extra footage of the monuments to include in our video about the trip.  Our driver misunderstood us, and disappeared (with our bags in the trunk) as soon as we got out of the car to “scout the location.”  That’s when I realized we had not exchanged cell phone numbers.

Within minutes we had been escorted away from the Washington Monument for filming without a permit.  But some kind of telepathy brought the driver back in time to whisk us off to K street and the mashup of blonde wood and sleek design along the Potomac that is the House of Sweden.

The event began with a luncheon, and I found myself seated next to the Swedish Ambassador and I almost went all George Bush (elder) in his lap. He's tucking in, really enjoying his feed. I'm a little less jazzed about the traditional fare. The Ambassador asks me how I like Swedish food. I take a big heaping forkful of lutefisk, almost barf, smile and say, "love it." Talk about international diplomacy. I expect a call from Condi any moment.

We then heard from Lisa Thoren, board member and daughter of the founder of BabyBjorn and watched a no-kidding runway fashion show of baby carriers through the years.

But the highlight for me was Fanaroff.  He spoke of the work he did with his mentors popularizing a technique of placing newborn premature babies on the chests of their mothers for periods of skin to skin contact.  Dubbed “Kangaroo Care” the technique was shown to have tremendous developmental and health benefits for preemies.

It brought me back to 1998.  I was a familiar sight in Seton Hospital, padding into the NICU in my fuzzy robe, scrubbing in and heading to bay 8.  The nurses helped me move the scrawny, skinned rabbit of a preemie from his isolette, with the tube down his nose, and the IV jabbed in his scalp and the heart monitors stuck to his sunken, orange-tinted chest, onto my bare stomach.  I wrapped the robe around both of us and rocked.

I am convinced that was the moment that made me the guy I am today -- what brought me to the Swedish Embassy to nearly upchuck on a diplomat and meet the doctor who made a difference.

Here’s my preemie today. 

Clay Nichols, Family Correspondent:
Clay’s column, Dadventure, published twice monthly to Gather Essentials: Family, is a sure-fire guide to raising flawless, perfectly behaved, and always obedient children.  Yeah, right.
 
Clay is the co-author of Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off Your Shorts, an award-winning playwright, and the Chief Creative Officer at DadLabs.com, a fatherhood website.