shouldn’t we be less stressed?

Another day at Winchester Hospital. Things there are more low-key than at Children’s, but the stress level is actually higher in some ways. It is getting harder each day to leave our boy. In a way it was worse today because we had to leave when Riley was still awake. For me it was like I was abandoning him. I know that Shelby didn’t take it any better than that. I think it’s more painful to leave him now because he’s acting like a normal newborn. Sleeping less, eating more and spending more time looking at your face when you talk to him. Especially when you hold him. We need an extra helping of God’s grace to get through this time as the stress is spilling over into every part of our life. We’ve had to do a lot of apologizing to each other over the last couple of days…

We had a short period of “normality” (read: things that have nothing to do with hospitals) this morning when we were able to go to our friends Marissa and Vitaliy’s wedding ceremony. It was a wonderful event and we wish them all of God’s blessings as husband and wife. By the end we were feeling the pull of missing our boy though and we were ready to head back to Winchester. Real normality would have been pushing a baby carriage. Not to be today. We’re aiming for church next week.

Adding to the stress level today was the fact that Riley had another episode of decreased O2 while eating overnight. He needs to have 48 hours without one of these periods to be released. It’s starting to make us crazy. We’ve tried to do some things differently to help Riley hit this last benchmark. First, having him eat every three hours instead of four so that he won’t be as hungry and maybe won’t guzzle his meals without breathing. He’s also going to be using an Avent limited flow nipple on his bottle. This will force him to have to work for his food (like when he’s breast feeding) rather than having the milk just pour out of the bottle into his mouth with no effort. I fed him with this bottle to “top him off” after mom’s breast feeding tonight and it was much different than with the other bottles. He acted the same way that he does when he’s breast feeding as far as swallowing goes, and was actually more awake at the end than when he started. Hopefully it’ll help him to pass his last “test” with flying colors and we’ll actually get to take him home on Monday. We’ll see.

So we have at least one more day of the hospital stay. We’re hopeful it will be the last. Ever. The next time I post pictures of myself and my boy (after the ones that follow here) I want to see a background of my home, church, or some friend or family member’s house. Even as we praise God for the hospitals and the people who have worked at them and the help Riley’s gotten, we’re really sick of being in the hospital. So, some pictures:

Dad feeds his boy (check out Riley's punk rock 'do):

Dad and Riley read the Bible Rhyme Book:

We love our boy!

Jonathan