Premature Life

I want to thank my friend Tim Jackson in Washington DC, for letting me post the above image of his nephew Mason, who was born 3 months premature back in June of 2008 at the Children's Hospital in Washington DC. The rest of the images on Tim's Flickr account are absolutely remarkable. For some time now, Tim and I have both known each other from various paparazzi assignments etc. Both of us share similar interests when it comes to the Nikon technology and we help each other out with learning resources. Tim has an amazing way of capturing images with his photojournalism skills!

Anyhow I wanted to share one his photos because it inspired me and I thought of how difficult it must be as a fellow parent, to experience the following:

Dear Joey,

So Mason is doing good! I took a few images of him yesterday and I was going to do a whole shoot but he fell asleep in my arms and it was the longest time I have had to spend with him one on one. I just ended up hanging with him, while he was sleeping in my arms most of the time and hanging out with my sister. He has a surgery tomorrow to fix a hernia which is typical with premature babies. Then he's got more tests the following week to make sure he's not having seizures and they will also be checking his hearing and eyesight too. It's alot of waiting and seeing from day to day, which can be very draining on the whole family especially my sister. Thankfully my sister had recently recieved her degree in the field of nursing before this happened, which helps her a lot in understanding all the medical stuff, but it's still overwhelming for anyone to go through. Mason has a feeding tube through his nose into his stomach (which also gives him meds) and an oxygen line. So he's hooked up to wires 24/7 and takes numerous meds throughout the day. With these wires in the early stages, there was the risk of him pulling them out or them getting clogged or fluid getting into his lungs wich all had to be looked out for. If you think a crying newborn can keep you up at night I would say that a silent newborn with special needs is impossible to get sleep with. The wires will all eventually come out but because premi's have the most trouble in developing there lungs its very critical that they are ready and can swallow and that there stomachs can handle it before he gets off them. Mason has also been diagnosed with critical hearing loss which means they think he will most likely be deaf. He is fitted with hearing aids he received last week and may be a likely candidate for coculair implants. Every week a nurse, physical therapist and sign language instructor stops by to visit mason and help out. We are all trying to learn sign language. Its fun, but sad and frustrating at the same time. The worst part of all this is not knowing and really having to wait till Mason is about 2 to 3 years old, in order to tell what all the problems he will have to overcome in the long run growing up. All this said, none of it really matters because Mason is growing into a beautiful strong little man everyday and its a miracle and blessing he's here with us everyday. The pictures really do no justice when looking at the first pics of him, when he was only 3 days old because there's not really any reference to scale, but if you imagine printing one of those at a 4x6 size, it would probably be right and that would put him in the palm of your hand! My sister spent over 180 days in the hospital with him, driving 1 hour and 45 minutes each way, everyday until he was released. The grandmothers also took a lot of shifts with her too. Everyone at that hospital knew Mason and my family by the time he left. Anyways like I said he's doing great now considering all he's been through! We can only take it one day at a time.

Regards,

Tim Jackson, Washington, DC