Why Cameron is No Ordinary Kid - Part 26

Life changed once Cameron opened his eyes. For starters I now kept the blind down during the day.

We were so excited that Cameron was waking up but he wasn't my baby. He was a limp, bloated, non responsive version of my baby. I started to grieve for my lost baby. I realized he was gone. I hadn't given up hope but my heart knew that my beautiful, smiley, charming baby was gone. I still loved Cameron but he was a different Cameron.

I had wanted to be a mother for so long and I had loved every moment of being a mother. There was nothing better in the world than sitting and hugging Cameron. I would rock him to sleep and ponder on the miracle of his birth and how lucky I was. I had been content and deliriously happy.

I grieved silently, I didn't cry openly. I always had it together. Occasionally late at night I would have a quiet sob into my pillow but it was short lived because at any moment a nurse could be in our room asking me questions.

Cameron spent more and more time awake but his eyes told us that he wasn't with us. His eyes were empty. I started to think he couldn't hear me or see me. Maybe that explained why he was staring through me and not responding to me. Every day when my mother visited she would assure me Cameron could hear me and see me but I was hard to convince until the day my mother saw Cameron react to my voice. That was the first time he had reacted to me in anyway since the morning before he slipped into the coma. That was now over three weeks ago.

As Cameron woke up he was able to be disconnected from some of his machines and monitors. He was left with his mainline and his feeding tube. He couldn't be disconnected from his feeding tube because he had lost his sucking reflex. I had reached the point of extreme exhaustion and despair but my mother was not going to be beaten. When Cameron had been born she had taught him to suck so she decided she would do it again. She got a dummy and for two hours she pushed that dummy in and out of Cameron's mouth until his brain remembered what to do. After two hours Cameron could suck again  and we were able to start introducing bottle feeds with tube feeds as a back up to ensure he was receiving enough sustenance. It didn't take too long before the feeding tube could go as well.

It was so wonderful to be able to cuddle our baby again. To be able to sit and cuddle him and feed him. A little bit of normality had returned.