The Long Haul

Here's Zach. Is he just the coolest guy or what?

Anyway...If I were more of a 'glass is half full' kind of person, like Dave, I would start out by saying that Zach is doing great, that he's making good progress day by day. But the fact is, I'm feeling kinda low. It's not postpartum depression; it's more like postpartum frustration. I'm tired of spending days running back and forth to the hospital. I'm tired of having to surrender our baby at the end of every too-short visit. I just want him to come home, and there's no clear answer about how long it will take.

All of this belly-aching should explain why Dave instituted a house rule the other day: It's OK to be sad but it's not OK to feel sorry for yourself. That one gave me pause for a bit. I've been on the baby scene long enough to know that plenty of people have it worse than we do: the moms who are still struggling to get pregnant or stay pregnant; the moms whose water broke early like mine but whose babies didn't make it; the moms whose babies have been in the NICU for 3 months or more; the moms who have a sick child in the hospital...the list goes on. We're among the truly lucky ones. And as Fairy Godmother Joanne pointed out this morning, worrying or stewing isn't going to get Zach home any sooner - he'll let us know very clearly when he's ready on his own time.

So, back to Zach. He has up and down days. He's done really well on two of the last three visits, especially with latching on and nursing. But then there are times like this afternoon when he makes it abundantly clear that he's too tired to even open his mouth. That's when we just have to step back and let him be a sleepy preemie.

The doctor told us something interesting about preemies in the NICU: She said that in the past they wouldn't have even attempted to bottle-feed 34-weekers, they would have just fed them through a tube and let them sleep the day away. But insurance companies have stepped up the pressure on the NICUs to show measurable progress toward the babies learning to eat. The end result is that they are challenging the babies a lot more and a lot earlier than they ever did in the past. The trick is that, as with Zach, we have to keep watching really closely and learning his cues for when he's had enough.

My parents are here now, which is a big relief in a lot of ways because they are helping with everything : cooking, dishes, grocery shopping , laundry, cleaning, babysitting, driving back and forth to the hospital, etc. Makes me realize that we actually needed more help than we thought we did. My only hope is that they are still able to be here when Zach comes home and the real juggling act begins.

Awards for best baby-on-the-brain moments:

First prize: Me. Dave and I are sitting in the NICU and I'm holding Zach while the nurse tells us that we should check out the NICU family lounge down the hall. I zone out for a few minutes, rocking Zach, and then turn to Dave:
Me: "So, how is that family lounge?"
Dave: "Uh...I've been sitting here the whole time?"

Second prize: Dave: "I'm so glad that when Zach was born the first phone call we made was to Luke. We weren't able to do that when Luke was born because...Luke was the one being born."

Third prize: Luke. We're dropping off our nightly breast milk supply at the NICU nurses' station and Luke calls out to our nurse: "At night do the nurses sometimes just drink up all of the milk?"