Feb. 20 - Do not do this at home

Weight 6 lbs. 6 oz. Tonight I was hoping for better photos, but he was sleeping. Because he was sleeping (and don't do this at home), I put his little wildcat in the bed with him to show how he's grown! There will be nothing in his bed at home...don't worry - this is just for special effects.

Gerard had a great feeding at 6:00 on demand and didn't wake up for me while I was there...and I didn't want to wake him. He was sleeping so well. Speaking of well...Big news...the goal is Monday for his homecoming! Before that can happen there are tons of classes and we are "boarding in" tomorrow night. I can hardly wait (not). Sleeping, or rather, not sleeping in the hospital reminds me of recent flashbacks. In fact, tonight in the NICU one of the machines sounded just like the one I had when I was on mag. Beeping and beeping and beeping went on for nearly an hour before it got some attention (it wasn't our machine).
Tomorrow night we get to work with the medical equipment we'll take home to practice with it and hopefully not get any sleep so that we can sleep this weekend for the last time ever. Well, at least for four or five years, I guess!
We also watched the scary infant CPR video and take the rest of the class tomorrow. Anyone sitting for him gets to go through that class, too. It really is frightening. But not knowing proper CPR for infants is more frightening if you need to use it. I'm ready! Then there's the "discharge" class. You'd think these folks would have a checklist of sorts, but they don't. It's all willy-nilly piece-mealed out to you in bits and on demand. Not my style. They really should have given us a punch list weeks ago so we could prepare.

The inversion is so bad here that we'll miss the eclipse. That's too bad. I love lunar eclipses. So beautiful. The air is so thick with muck I can actually taste it and my lungs feel it. Not sure it's a good idea to take a sensitive baby out of the hospital in the pollution, but hey, I'm not a medical professional.

We had the car seat checked by the experts and we checked out OK on that. The seat makes it look like we live in Miami. I got the brightest one I could find - and it's aqua to boot! Remember Miami Vice? We'll certainly photograph him in that! I had to do something with some humour. I actually like it. Many of the newer car seats are black. And what's hotter in the summer than pure black? Nothing.