goodbye hospital part 2

Shane comes home!

Ok, Michelle got discharged Friday and so did Shane. A good friend of ours told us that his favorite pics were always leaving the hospital. I guess a new family off to meet the world is a great vision. Here's our exit:

They bring him down to our room, and the sleepless nights begin

This is great. Mother and child reunion. She'll yell at me for putting up a pic with her hair like this. But let's be honest, hospitals and glamour mix like oil and water.

The first night actually wasn't so bad. For me.

Here's a proud grandma:

And a proud grandpa:

More fun pics from day 3

Dad's first diaper change. Mom needs to hurry up and get out of that wheelchair, this is gross.

Our first attempt at feeding - he takes forever! i thought this part was supposed to be easy...

Ok seriously, who has more hair? Well, yeah, i need a shave, but check out Shane's mane (nice). I mean, he needs a haircut and he's only 3 days old. He's gonna break my bank account. I can see it already.

I am thinking he may be a male model someday...for garden gnomes.

NICU update

Ok at this point I want to give an update on where he is and how he is doing. As everyone knows, he is still in the NICU (neonatal icu). It feels like they are generally trying to come up with excuses to keep him, so annoying. Of course, we’d rather they be safe. But at first when he came out he was a little “dusky or blue”, meaning a bit of trouble breathing. So, they put him on oxygen, then slowly weaned him off as his saturation scores stayed at 99-100%. He was off that by 7pm that first night. The next step was testing him without the heat lamps to see if he could maintain temperature control. He did that just fine too. After that they noticed a blood sugar level reading that they weren’t entirely happy with, so they wanted to keep him to observe for a while longer. That has not come up again. As of yesterday morning, he wasn’t eating as much as they wanted him to (they want 60cc’s (2oz)), and he was only doing 25. So they had a feeding specialist come in, she tried out a few diff nipples and found one that worked. Immediately after she was done, he had the biggest blowout. His first. I know I’m supposed to be proud and not grossed out. I remember bill cosby saying “ooh my little baby went poo poo”. Well, I am proud. But I am also grossed out. While they were changing his diaper and the nurse was showing me how (I’ve made it this far in life without doing it), she was explaining how she always covers him with the new diaper to prevent, uh, sprayage. And as she’s talking he does it! Sprays Michelle, literally sitting 10 feet away in her wheelchair! She flinches and starts laughing which hurts her stitched up stomach terribly. It was a pretty funny scene.

Anyway, they are now going up 5cc’s every other feeding and have him at about 50 cc’s. They say if he stays on this trajectory, he should be moved to the regular nursery first thing tomorrow morning, and then down with us after they check him out there. We are still on track to go home (with him) Friday at 10am.

Michelle rises from bed, and gets to hold Shane

By Tuesday morning, Michelle was ready to go and finally see her baby. It was hard for her, not being able to sit up and see him the first day. She could see his feet, but that was it. I took pics and a little video to show her. One of the videos I took was of him doing his scream. Apparently, no one has taught him to cry yet, so he just does an angry yelp. Hope this video works.

Hilarious right? Funny now, but it will probably haunt me for the next 3months.

Ok, here is michelle holding him for the first time (at least OUTSIDE her body):

and me holding him:

First PICS!

This is the first picture I was able to take of Shane after he got all his tubes and wires out, almost 7 hours after he was born! Honestly it was hard to see him like that. But something about watching the nurse brush his mass of hair made me laugh. I seriously think he has more hair than me.

Hazmat suit, or my next halloween costume?

This is me waiting to be called into the OR.

First post

Hi everyone – this blog was something we planned to do from the beginning, and update from Day 1, but our hospital doesn’t have wireless internet access…I mean, what year is this we’re living in? Anyway, the first opportunity I have to actually post something is tonight, Wed, Sep 26, nearly 2 whole days after Shane was born. It’s frustrating, but…here it is.

This first pic is of Michelle and I just before the C section. She doesn’t seem so nervous here, but when they came in to get her, she sure was. So was I, of course!