Author:Carl MacDonald

“Aim for the due date and you won’t be far off.”

My sons were scarcely an hour old when a midwife uttered those words. That due date was almost 13 weeks in the future. Yet that’s how long we’d apparently have to wait until we could take them home.

It dragged. There was so much that happened between that traumatic premature birth and the moment when I left the hospital with my family of four.

In this post, I rewind to that day in the summer of 2019 and relive the immediate aftermath of bringing my sons into the outside world.

When your baby is sick or born premature, there’s one thing you’ll undoubtedly experience: receiving bad news.

The thing is, it’s such a tense and emotional experience anyway, that it can be hard to comprehend and process individual pieces of bad news without feeling like you’re losing it.

I never really gave much thought to what my first Father’s Day as a dad would bring.

Presumably, novelty socks, personalised pint glasses and some chocolates would feature prominently. I certainly didn’t envisage spending it in hospital – yet that’s exactly what happened. If your sons insist on making an extremely premature entrance into the world, that’s the way it goes.

This is what it’s like to spend Father’s Day on a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

I thought I’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in a zoo.

Man, I was confused. I thought this was a hospital for sick babies. Why were we talking about animals?

What the hell is kangaroo care?

Turns out it’s a really important part of the neonatal journey – both for parents and baby. And while it’s essential for mums to take part, it’s also something that dads can participate in… and we even bring our own benefits to the party.

Here’s how…