This is a story about Tylenol. Or, since we’re a generic type family, acetaminophen.

Michael had his 2-month well baby visit on Monday. You know what that means–shots. Michael’s face went beet-red–I mean, beet–with two little yellow dots in the middle where his eyebrows came together. But then he was fine. The nurse wrote down dosages for the various formulations of acetaminophen and sent us on our way.

About bedtime, Michael became inconsolable. It seemed like any way we touched him caused him agony. We’ve never had an immunization reaction, at least not like this, so I ran upstairs and gave him a dropperful of acetaminophen without looking at the nurse’s notes. After all, it’s either one dropperful or two, .8 or 1.6, and I knew I needed the smallest dose. As the night progressed, he refused to wake up. At the 4 1/2 hour mark, feeling my own well-being reaching the danger zone, I went and got him up, but he refused to nurse. Flat-out refused. After fifteen minutes and a second dose of medicine, I managed to get five swallows of milk down his throat. I put him back to bed and went downstairs to pump. On the way, I tripped on a shoe left on the stairs and slid the rest of the way down. Temper tantrum. Bad mood. Resentment skyrocketing. Can’t sleep…though everyone else in the house is like the dead, even the one that shouldn’t be.

As I wandered around the middle floor, I decided to get out the sheets on immunizations, you know, the ones they hand you every time but you never, ever read. I figured I’d look at the reactions and see if extreme sleepiness and lack of appetite was par for the course. And I saw the handwritten dosage note: .4 mL.

My insides turned to a hard rock. I’d just given him .8. Twice. I thought a whole lot of words not fit for the public and turned on the computer to look up acetaminophen overdose, and by the time I finished reading I wanted to throw up. All reason told me that .8 mL is a miniscule dose and they build in huge margins of error…but the fact remained that his symptoms were right there on the computer screen.

I called poison control at 2:45 a.m., and a lovely woman named Janelle talked me down from the ledge. In the morning, Michael sort of ate, and began coughing, and it was soon clear that he was not overdosed, he had simply, and finally, succumbed to a full-blown virus.

But I didn’t give him any more medicine.

Fast forward to last night. At 1a.m., he woke up screaming. Not crying–screaming. He wouldn’t nurse, he wouldn’t let me put him down so I could go pump–he was absolutely inconsolable, and he kept rolling up in a ball like his tummy hurt. I managed to get him to sleep on my chest for a little while, but by 2:30 a.m. I was out of tricks, and I pulled out the acetaminophen again, this time turning up the light to make sure I got the correct dosage. And I discovered something that made the bottom drop out of my stomach again.

The dropper is not .8. It’s more like 1 or 1.2. And I gave him a full dropperful. Which means what I told Janelle on the phone last night about his dosage is wrong. And the web site said the symptoms of overdose usually show up 12 hours or more later, and abdominal pain is a big one on the list.

I cannot call poison control two nights in a row. I just can’t.

What if my baby IS overdosed, and I DON’T call, just because I feel stupid?

I thought about what  I’d read: liver damage, brain damage. I can’t imagine having another child with special needs, not when it was my fault.

I called.

Janelle answered the phone again, thank God, and after about three exchanges she remembered me from the night before. She talked me down off the ledge again (because let’s face it, at this point I was on the way to a second night running of less than four hours’ sleep, on the heels of a week or more with less than five. Let’s be frank, I was not in a good emotional place). “Let me do the math for you,” she said kindly. “How much does he weigh?” Calculation, dosage, division. “It’s probably a one-mil dropper, and he could have ten of those before he overdosed.”

Thank God…crisis averted.

I laid down with Michael on my chest again, in flagrant violation of everything anyone’s ever told you about baby safety, and I listened to his horribly stuffy nose…and didn’t get back to sleep for an hour. But at least I knew I didn’t poison my baby. And I am properly humbled. It’s clear to me that I will never, never have this whole parenthood thing figured out. Even the part I’ve done four times.

It’s almost Lent, folks! I know, I’m ahead of the game, but I have a good reason: I am hosting a giveaway for my new book, Bring Lent To Life. If you’re a Catholic mother with young (or youngish) children, click over and leave a comment for a chance to win a signed copy!

Okay, now that I’ve done my shameless self-promo…moving on.

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I was poking around online, doing magazine market research yesterday, and an ad for “Molexit” caught my eye. Considering the helpless rage with which I am consumed every time I walk across my big lawn, my ankle twisting on the maze of mole hills, you can imagine I clicked. A little browsing led me to THIS. All I have to say is: These are people after my own heart.

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I teach flute and voice lessons in my basement, which you might imagine can be a bit of an adventure with three small children and, uh, a nursing baby. Alex used to be very quiet over in the corner, humming vocal warmups along with the students while he bent over a Lego creation or a rescue hero. (Precursor to the autopilot humming he does All.The.Time now.) But Julianna? Julianna takes it to a whole new level. This week in lessons, she turned her back to us, planted her feet shoulder-width apart, and sang to the sunny window with arms out Broadway-finale style, “Eee-AAAAAAAHHHHaaaaah!”

Ah, how I love that girl, despite her selective deafeness to anything she doesn’t feel like hearing…

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Speaking of Julianna, or rather, Julianna and Michael…my baby is 8 weeks old already. I cannot believe it. I’ve been anxiously watching for his first smile, and we got it this week–a few, fleeting, absolutely adorable smiles. But incredibly hard to catch. I spent twenty minutes making a complete, blithering fool of myself while the dish water got cold one night. Once–once–I hit the button at exactly the right moment….and the camera turned off. I had my finger on the power instead of the shutter. Sigh. In the end, this was the best I got:

While Julianna, who torments him ceaselessly, turning him sideways in his bouncy, soundlessly and sneakily rolling him over onto his tummy (and here I thought I was making a big joke when I said she was destined to be a superspy), dragging him by one arm when my back is turned, lying on top of him…what, you think I’m kidding? Look at this! Caught in the act!

Julianna is the one Michael smiles for most often. What is this, some freaky variant on Stockholm syndrome???????

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Smiles aside, Michael adores all his big siblings. He can’t smile with his mouth yet, but his whole face smiles. Moms, you know that look, right? Heart-meltingly bright eyes, arms and legs kicking, face alight? He does that often for us. And it makes me happy to see how much Nicholas loves him. I was worried about Nicholas, because he’s such a drama king, and so needy. I was afraid we’d be in for all manner of resentment and tantrums. But the transition has been remarkably smooth, and he absolutely adores his baby brother, asking to hold him at all times of the day. Of course, he lasts about ten seconds, but hey. He’s a boy.

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Alex was home from school two days this week. And now we have piles of homework to catch up on. Actually, he did most of it while I was teaching yesterday, but it’s a wakeup call, reminding me that whew, we are entering a new phase of parenthood!

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Well, I’m officially back to that phase of my life: the obsessed with sleep stage. It’s cyclical, and varies in cause and style. Right now it’s the “how many times did he get up last night?” strain. The Shangri-la of sleep for me right now would be getting to that stage where the baby wakes up around two and then sleeps till five or six. My babysitter keeps asking, “Is he sleeping through the night yet?” I’m like, uh…no. Is he supposed to? I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had a child who slept through the night until he or she was three years old.

Whatever, dude. Sleep is for wimps.

But that makes me wonder–how many of you actually have kids who slept through the night consistently? And at what age?

Enough from me. Don’t forget to enter my giveaway!

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When I was pregnant with Alex, I was all about natural childbirth. I was one of those people that annoys the doctor by clarifying again and again and again that I DON’T want an epidural, I DON’T want forceps and episiotomy, and so on. Of course, all that assumes that the body is capable of laboring, which mine apparently isn’t. And after I became the classic case of spiraling interventions leading to C-section, I sighed and shrugged and said, “Oh, well, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. People should stop freaking out about C sections.”

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I held that opinion until the third trimester of my pregnancy with Nicholas, when I realized that the damage and weakness done to my abdomen was the cause of all the pain that made walking excruciating–I could barely support my own weight. And realized that I had to restrengthen before I could have another baby. From the 6-week mark in 2009, I did Pilates 2-3 times a week and added exercises from my massage therapist, and we got by this time.

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What I wasn’t counting on was that the fourth C section recovery would be as difficult as it has been. The pain has been stubborn, the bleeding has hung on, and then of course, we had latch issues that made nursing excruciating for several weeks. I can feel the difference in my body. The six and a half years since Alex’s birth, with three more C’s, have really taken their toll. I’m more aware of the incisions, the weakness in my own body. And the end of the incision rubbed raw and opened up in the last couple of weeks, defying all my attempts to heal it.

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So yesterday I had my postpartum visit. The day dawned with snow that canceled school. Suddenly I was looking at a two-hour drive with ALL FOUR CHILDREN, with nothing but a doctor’s office at the end. I panicked and called my mom. She stepped up to the plate and kept the older three at home so I only had to take the baby with me. And the doctor found that there was a stitch hanging out there, refusing to fall off (because of the distance, he actually sews me up with dissolvable stitches instead of using staples). That was actually a relief to know; I thought I’d done something wrong.

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However, yesterday was a rough day on the nursing front. Two hours, a quick doctor visit, and two hours back home = lots of sleeping baby interspersed with cranky baby. We nursed int he car at a rest area, and we nursed in the car in the doctor’s office lot before starting home. And what I thought was simple engorgement on one side (because he hates nursing that side) turned out to be my very first really nasty plugged duct.

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Now, I have a history of plugged ducts. It comes with the territory when you have abundant supply and, ahem, abundant space. Usually these would be considered a blessing–certainly every mother in the NICU looked slightly green when I walked in having pumped four ounces in ten minutes. I have twenty-nine vials of milk residing in the deep freeze at present that I have no idea what to do with. In the NICU they called me the “Milk Maid.” I have been holding my breath these first six weeks, chowing on lecithin, massaging tissue, not multitasking much while nursing, to try to avoid plugs, because they’re such a horrid experience. I’ve had five or six already, but they were partial plugs, ones that, while achy, never caused me that panicky sense of lack of control. This one is one of those. I haven’t started panicking yet, but having three quarters of one breast blocked off, producing ridiculous amounts of milk that can’t get out…I’m getting there. Warm water, massage, and now I’m afraid I’m going to have to go pump. I just keep praying that the blockage will break quickly this time, and not hang around for three days like they’re wont to do.

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Breastfeeding moms…if you’ve never had a plugged milk duct…fall on your knees and thank God.

Now. Off to the mechanical pump. (Envision me gagging.)

Don’t we have a picture of Julianna and Nicholas looking at each other just like this?

New Year’s Eve it was 60 degrees and we took a nature walk that turned into a rock climb. Yes, I climbed rocks. No, I shouldn’t have. Yes, I paid the price for my bad judgment in pain. But I got to climb rocks!

(Yes, Julianna really did carry that purse up onto the Pinnacles, Mom. Until she started tripping, and then Daddy carried it.)

Chrissy and Alex on top of the rocks. Christian, Ed and the three littlest ones had already said “enough,” and at this point I called a retreat for us, too.  I knew I had already overdone it and I couldn’t go to the big window, on that spire in the background. I promised Alex we’d hire a babysitter later this spring and have a picnic up there, just him and me.

Grandma and Grandpa B. came in that evening and got to hold Michael for the first time.

And then, the big day arrived.

Our first “formal” family picture:

Thanks to my b-i-l Rob, who took pictures, and to my sister Andrea, who took time to send them to me on a busy night when she was trying to get her grades ready!

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Shared with 5 Minutes For Special Needs’ Special Exposure Wednesday…because my “special” girl exists in the midst of a family, and not off by herself…

Luke 2:19, NAB

When I went into the hospital on November 30th, I gave myself permission to take it easy for a while. I was supposed to have a whole lot more done before that happened–a proposed table of contents for a new book, a couple of columns, some music. The early delivery rearranged my plans; the NICU stay gave me time to get done more than I thought. But when I came home, I gave myself until the first of the year to rest, to recover, to adjust…in short, simply to be.

Some of it has been stressful, some of it sublime. I’ve handled it with grace, and without. But at all times, I’ve tried to stop and really be present to the moment–to feel it in my body, not just in some compartmentalized corner of my brain, or with my eyes through the screen of a digital camera. In the past month, I have sat in my nursing corner in the darkness and watched Orion trek across the night sky. I have sat there on bright mornings, with the newborn sun aglow on the walls while my other children play on my bed, reducing each other to helpless, jelly-kneed giggles while they wait their turn to hold Baby Brother. I have gotten back under the covers with my family, three, four, five people lined up across two pillows, and run my hands over each one, glorying in the distinct progression against my palms as I touch arms and faces: adulthood, age six, almost- five, almost-three, and infancy.

I have watched yet another baby work his magic on everyone around him.  I have tiptoed around an umbilical cord stump that refused to fall off, tried to soothe him through very cold baths on a towel on the bathroom floor. Changed diapers that smell cheesy and yeasty, and didn’t hold my nose, admitting softly to myself that I actually kind of like that breastmilk-diaper smell.

I have slept in, napped in the sunny (and not-so-sunny) afternoons, watched movies, done very little housework, occasionally overdone it and paid the price in my incisions. I have gone to way too many medical appointments and never bothered to take work with me, choosing instead to hold a baby and be still instead of productive while I waited in overheated waiting rooms. The last two days, I have lounged back to enjoy the solid, warm soft weight of a child against my chest, pressing my nose to his head to breathe in that scent of Heaven, the smell of chrism, while my lips press against silky eyebrows and satin skin.

And now it is January third, and time is up. The baptism and extended holiday visits from family members have gifted me with some extra days, but now reality begins to settle back in, bit by bit: cooking, cleaning, laundry, lessons, deadlines. But the experience has taught me that I need a new balance for a new year–one that achieves fewer words or notes on a page and more moments. One that involves being present when my children are filling my soul instead of keeping my brain busy in the background working on some problem to be solved at naptime.

Today is bath day, and I think when I put Michael in the tub for the first time (his recalcitrant cord finally gave up the ghost on the last night of the old year), I won’t wash his hair. Maybe not the next time, either. The smell of chrism won’t last forever–the scent of Heaven will fade along with the inner hum of stillness found this past month, as normal life settles in once more. But while it lasts, I can use it to anchor myself in the resolve for this new year.

Image via Wikipedia

We didn’t expect much of a crowd this weekend. After all, it’s our fourth child, and the only reason we got a lot of attention this go-round was the NICU drama.

I asked my cousin–my oldest, best friend, ever since she was four and I was five and we lived three thousand miles away from each other–and her husband to be godparents for Michael, and I set the baptism for New Year’s Day, thinking that travel might be less inconvenient during the holidays, and also knowing that my youngest sister, who lives a long way away too, would be able to attend. Total count, including other siblings and grandparents: fifteen. Your basic family holiday get-together.

Oh, yes, and there are local family members, too. Add three or four for uncle, aunt, and a cousin or two.

Then my cousin’s parents—my godparents—decided to come in as well. I was thrilled–it was so special to have them present. Then another of their children decided to join the party. And my 96-year-old grandmother’s sister decided to come in and visit her family, and recruited a third sister to bring her from the airport into town. And somehow it seemed wrong to exclude the rest of the uncles and aunts on my dad’s side of the family, who would otherwise have trouble finding a time to see each other over the holidays at all. And then how do you exclude their children (with families of their own) who would like to see their cousins?

And then my in-laws, who we had originally thought weren’t going to be able to come, decided after all that they would drive in for the occasion.

That is how a small affair becomes beautiful chaos, causing my mother to hyperventilate and me to stress, causing us to move the venue from our house to the church cafeteria, prompting dozens of phone calls begging for help in feeding the multitudes, and my dad to respond to my desire to keep things simple with an ironic, “We’re way beyond that, Kate.”

It was a beautiful day, a beautiful ceremony, chaos-laden, and one I will remember forever. If only I had remembered to take the picture of the whole crowd, the one I intended to use to illustrate this post. If only I could find the cable to offload the pictures from the camera this dark January morning, before I dash upstairs to get Alex out of bed for his first day of school post-Christmas. Oh well. You know. Chaos.

I have never had to buy very many clothes for my kids; we’ve been the grateful recipients of several tons of children’s clothing over the years, so shopping for baby clothes is sort of a novelty! I went to Target on Saturday (yes, one week before Christmas, having forgotten the stroller, which meant I had to carry Michael in my arms all over that madhouse of a mall…didn’t think that one through very clearly) in search of a Christmas outfit for a newborn boy. Target had nothing dressy-Christmasy, but I did find some of those cute fleecy outfits: one cream with red reindeer and brown pants, one light blue with a polar bear.

“Those are cute,” Christian said when I got home, “but they’re really not dressy.”

I sighed and shrugged. “Well, I have to go to Barnes & Noble for Mom on Monday,” I said. “I’ll go over to Penney’s. They’ll have that kind of stuff.”

So yesterday I trekked back to the Mall (this time with stroller!) and excavated the baby department in search of dressy Christmas clothes for a baby boy. Would you like to know what I found?

NOTHING.

There were a dozen and a half different styles of super-frilly, satiny, shiny, sparkly dresses for newborn GIRLS–all on the clearance rack, I might add; apparently as of December 19th, Valentine’s Day is the pre-eminent holiday…I could go on ad nauseam about that, but it would be another post…but the only clothes for boys on that rack were onesies that said obnoxious, offensive things like, “WHATEVER SANTA DOESN’T BRING ME, GRANDMA WILL!”

I’ve always loathed what I call “attitude” clothes, but I’ve never seen them for boys before. It’s always girls’ clothes with words plastered across the derriere or the breasts, proclaiming “SPOILED! I’m perfect! Worship me! Princess in training! AVAILABLE!” Things that set girls up to be insufferable or objectified (or both).

The exporting of “attitude” wear to boys’ clothes is not attractive.

But even more irritating is the dichotomy between girls, who are dolled up within an inch of their life beginning in the newborn stage, and boys, who apparently are never expected to dress up at all. What’s wrong with this picture?

If I complain to J C Penney headquarters, I’m sure I’ll get some bland, polite note back saying “We offer what people buy; there is no market for dressy boys’ clothes for Christmas.” But I don’t buy this argument. After all, it’s not like anybody’s offered us the opportunity to buy dressy boys’ clothes for Christmas, is it? I took a quick look online just now and the dressy outfits seem to start at 12 Months.

Well, on some level I can understand; it’s hard enough to get those tiny arms and legs into a sleeper, much less a shirt and vest and pants. But then, we seem to think it’s an acceptable sacrifice to make for girls, so why not for boys?

(Close rant.)

Before I begin, let me share my success of the week: my short story, “The Third Day,” placed in the top ten for the Glass Woman Prize. The link only lists the story, because I’m still hoping to publish it elsewhere, but I’m pretty proud of this honor–there were well over 900 entries, and I helped with the first-round reading, so I know how good the quality of the entries was.

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My mom tells this story about me when I was about Julianna’s age. Apparently I went into the bedroom while my parents were at breakfast and dragged my baby sister out of the crib and carried her out to the kitchen shoved up against my chest.

Can you guess why I’m sharing this story? 

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Last night I was folding laundry in the upstairs hallway, with Michael lying on the floor beside me, while Christian gave baths. He sent the middle two to me for dressing for bed. I got Julianna ready, and Nicholas came down the hall. I turned around to pick up a diaper–I mean, literally turned around to pick up a diaper–and when I turned back around, Julianna was standing in the hallway with Michael crushed against her chest, hanging down like a flopping baby doll. She looked incredibly pleased with herself. “Julianna, no!” I shrieked, and rescused him before she gave him brain damage, dropping him on the floor.

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This experience taught me that there is no safe place in the house for Michael if my eyes are not on him, except the crib. So this morning, when I needed to use the bathroom, I went out of my way to put him out of her reach, in the crib. Except apparently even that isn’t safe, because I started hearing bloodcurdling screams. I rushed back to the scene to find that she had grabbed him by the arm through the crib rail and dragged him over to the edge. Where she was presently engaged in trying to pull him by the arm through the rail. His arm was at a horrible angle. I was actually afraid she’d dislocated it.

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I suppose this means that for the forseeable future, I have to have a WAY better idea of where my daughter is and what she is doing at all times of the day. Nice, Julianna. Like I needed anything else to worry about. (Note to Dottie: are you sure it’s too late to run away?????)

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All kidding aside, I know these stories are funny, but I am a little freaked out. I already stop to make sure he’s breathing far more often than I ever did with the first three. I suppose that’s a NICU gift that keeps on giving, but I would never have thought I would become one of those moms. It’s not like me.

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On a different subject: Here’s an article I wrote for Liguorian magazine’s December issue. They asked me to write a reflection on generosity as it relates to the Advent/Christmas season. I focused on Christmas as the gift of a person, Jesus, and how that might shape the way we look at giving–in other words, giving of ourselves more than giving Stuff.

I’ve been through difficult nursing times, but I have never faltered in my commitment.

Until now.

I feel terrible. As if everything that could plague a new mother postpartum is hitting me all at the same time. My neck, my shoulders, my back, the headache; the incision; the nether regions; worst of all, nursing is excruciating. I mean excruciating. All.The.Time. This week I’ve had diagnostic work, a chiropractic adjustment, conversations with the doctor’s office, conversation with the lactation consultant, and tomorrow I’ll have an appointment with her. I think it’s a ductal yeast infection. I’ve gotten through that before, I can handle it for another 36 hours, right?

Except I was in tears at 3:45 this morning. Michael has a habit of chewing on me without drawing any milk out. I keep thinking there’s something wrong with the latch…or maybe he’s just not awake enough…or the position’s wrong. I mean, this is my fourth child. I’m an expert breastfeeding mom now. I ought to be able to problem solve my way through most things. And I did…he got his feeding, it just took almost an hour. An hour of experimenting with latches and positions, and a lot of chewing on skin that was already raw. I thought about the several dozen vials of breastmilk pumped out during the NICU stay. How long will that last? Can I just quit?

Sore, stiff neck and headache greeted me this morning, heaping insult upon misery. It was getting better for several days, then suddenly took a turn for the worse. Every single time I sit down to nurse, I do neck stretches. I really thought it would be improving by now. I knelt in the hallway folding clothes and crying. Julianna came over and gave me hug after hug, shaking her head and signing “cry,” to say: Don’t cry. Don’t cry. What I really wanted was a long, comforting cuddle with my husband but he was trying to get out of the house with Alex.

Three ibuprofen later I feel marginally human, but life seems pretty overwhelming. I can recite verbatim everything everybody’s thinking, about taking care of yourself, taking a nap, asking for help, etc. etc. I am taking naps, and how much more help can I ask? I’ve already hit up two people for chauffering services this week, and a dozen more have either brought or been loosely scheduled to bring food. We could stock our deep freeze and not cook for the next three months—and it’s wonderful, it will be so helpful to only cook half as much for the foreseeable future. But how can I ask more? I’m not the only person in the world with difficulties, and I’m sure mine are less severe than most.

More than likely this freak-out is post-NICU-stress related. Life keeps marching on, I keep trying to take care of kids and take back all the overwhelming burden that Christian had to carry by himself for ten days, and it’s almost Christmas and I’m having to say no to the kids’ school parties because I just don’t think I can do any more, which makes me feel horribly guilty. I’m not writing, I’m barely cleaning, just trying to keep up with the dishes and the laundry, and when I look around me I see people carrying burdens truly crushing. I don’t have any justification for flipping out over perfectly normal postpartum blues and ordinary health concerns. It just seems like there’s no end in sight, no time to just sit down on the couch and simply be. Be with my husband, mostly, just be, not crisis-hopping, not problem-solving how to get child care so he can work, not working out grocery lists long distance, not trying to communicate the latest unjustified bilirubin flip-out the doctor had today, not trying to figure out why they want to do yet another PKU test, not trying to work in another doctor appointment or diagnostic test, not tearing our hair out because Alex can’t seem to get himself together and we can’t juggle one more thing for him, not gnashing our teeth because Julianna’s lost some of her verbal skills and maybe it’s because we ran out of green tea three weeks ago and can’t seem to get any more made.

Life right now just feels like too much. It’s not just the last two weeks; the crisis of early delivery and NICU blindsided us on the back end of a long period of stress. I just want a few days to breathe, without crisis, without chaos, without the phone ringing twenty times a day from Sirius XM radio and the pediatrician’s office. I just want to be for a while. Is that so much to ask, God?

November 30, 2011

Christian killing time as we wait for the walk to the OR, around 8:15 p.m. The nurse accompanying us looks wide-eyed at me as I round the corners and walk like I know where I’m going…because by the fourth time, I do.

A quick glimpse, and then Michael disappears into the NICU.

December 1, 2011: Under the hood. Michael, in the NICU, under a heater and suffering from “tachypnia” (rapid breathing) and low oxygen saturations. He has an IV, a temperature probe (the heart), heart leads, and a pulsox. Soon to be added: NG tube for feeding.

On Friday, I take no pictures. Pretty much I cry all day. Just as well that nobody tries to visit. Bad enough falling to pieces in front of doctors and nurses, bad enough having complete strangers trying to hug you and make you feel better…doing it in front of family would be even worse. Because nobody can do anything to alleviate the suffering. Oh yes, and my milk starts coming in.

December 3: visit from the kids

In the morning, the staff decides that Michael has a “pneumothorax,” a partially collapsed lung. They put him on his tummy under the hood again and start pumping 100% oxygen in. It’s RSV season, so no kids are allowed in the NICU. No adults except parents and grandparents, for that matter. They wouldn’t even let great-Grandma in. Hence, almost all our visitors come to the window and view Michael through soundproof plexiglass.

Alex has control of the video camera. His finger is on the button when the curtain swishes open, and he gasps, “Oh! He’s so cute!” But of course, he doesn’t turn the camera on first.

After they leave for home, I return to the NICU and document some details: blood pressure cuff on a thigh…

…the hand recovering from a lost IV earlier that afternoon (the purple tube is the extension of the NG tube, through which he gets all his feedings by “gavage.”

…and the top of the “hood,” with the blue oxygen piping air into it.

December 5, 2011

Sunday, at last, I prevail in my pushing for nursing time. The pneumothorax has resolved, they’re weaning him off oxygen, although we’re stuck at 30% and can’t get off the last 9%. They put him on a cannula and we start nursing…some. Not all the time, though. Look at my poor baby’s heel. He’s black and blue with blood gas, blood sugar, and bilirubin sticks. I’m officially discharged from the hospital Sunday night at 11:20 p.m., and I continue on a day by day basis as a “house guest.” Hoping that sooner or later, I’ll get to nurse him around the clock.

December 7-9, 2011

Just when we think we’re on track to be going home Thursday, he drops his sats and we’re three steps back. Another crying day. But the last one. Slowly, he begins to improve, and around midday on the 9th, he’s finally wearing clothes, lying in an open crib, and un-oxygen-supported:

Now we only have to wrangle four delicate cords when nursing–the pulsox and the heart leads. After one false start, he passes his “car seat test, gets his hepatitis shot (finally). Saturday the 10th is Discharge Day. It begins with a formal permission to leave, pending circumcision…at 10 days old. I don’t remember it being so traumatic for the other two boys. Poor baby! My parents arrive late afternoon, and we make good our escape. Back at home, the kids arrive home from a show at the university and are wild with excitement. I can’t believe how big they all seem. But Michael’s asleep, so we send them to bed and they have to wait for morning for the big moment:

So there you go. That’s the story of a half-month, a half-Advent, and the beginning of life as a family of six. The drama’s not over, but at least it’s shifted to me and my health instead of his!