So this is going to be interesting. My little bear was born at 33+2 ( 33+5 the Drs changed his gestational age without telling me and gave me no logical or medical reason for doing so.) And has been in the NICU for a little over a week now. He is gaining weight perfectly, he's almost back up to birth weight, and he is maintaining a good temperature in a room that has the AC stuck on full blast. We were able to graduate to a crib rather than a heated bassinet and was doing amazing, until the night nurse came. The night nurse runs everything on the metric system, which isn't bad until you are calculating from Celsius to Fahrenheit. My entire family and my husband's family as well run low on the temperature scale, and so when he is maintaining a temperature that is normal for our family (including any infants born to it) they say it's "entirely too cold" and that 'with me being a first time mom I don't understand'. Mind you I have taken care of infants in much worse condition than my son and they are perfectly healthy kids now. On top of that they (the nurses) are making him reliant on his ng tube they don't really give him a chance to give his cues unless they are busy and I notice them first. Then he is able to feed from breast or bottle.

It just seems like every time we take one step forward we end up taking two steps back for the purposes of observation and because they want to, because I, apparently 'don't understand the because I'm a first time mom'.

Is it wrong of me to want to say "screw you", and take my son home "against medical advice" when I know how to care for him? Or should I wait? He will be 35 weeks on Sunday (35+3 by my count) and there are all kinds of little ones they are releasing that are smaller than him and even younger than him, but it seems like they are holding my little one on technicalities and because they want to. Every time I ask them to give me a good reason, medical or logical, for him staying they get really quiet and look at me like I am suddenly speaking a foreign language.

Is there anyone out there with the same or similar experience? Or anyone who has taken their baby out of the NICU early and taken them home "against medical advice" and had them thrive better there?

On a side note one of the nurses told me that if "[I] were to take him home early he would die." No he might die, but just flat "he will die". So what do you think?