With Baited Breath

Little Lamb,
We are trying not to get too excited and hang all our hopes on tomorrow, but your doctors have mentioned that if your bilirubin continues to go down as it has this week, then there is a chance that you might get to come home.  Like to our house.  And your own room, where there are no beeping machines and other crying babies.  After almost a month of life in the NICU, we are waiting with baited breath to see if you get to come home.

Tonight we went out to dinner since I didn't feel like cooking and your daddy said that we might not be a threesome again after tonight. :)  We probably won't be going many places after you are here, so it was a nice casual night out before we hunker down in "baby jail" as your Uncle Chad likes to call it.  We have had lots of friends offer to bring us dinners and we will happily take them up on the offer soon.  With all the chaos of going back and forth to the hospital, we thought it would be easier to wait until we were home for good to start the meals, but they will be greatly appreciated.

We also have been cautiously trying to make sure that things will be ready for you if tomorrow is the big day.  Daddy fought valiantly with the car seat base to get it installed in my little SUV (sorry to any future passengers, the seat is almost all the way up!) and will probably add the extra base to his tomorrow too.  I stocked up on groceries tonight after everyone else went to bed because I figured I couldn't sleep anyway.  I even took a special outfit to the hospital tonight so you can wear it home.  It's a onesie that says "little brother" and a tiny pair of navy pants.  It is funny to me that you are almost a month old and you have never worn anything other than a simple onesie!

On the logistical side of things with your doctors, we have had to think ahead about getting a few things for you, including prescriptions.  You are now on a very special (meaning very expensive) formula called Elecare which has a unique way of breaking down the fats in the bloodstream rather than going through your liver, so it is supposed to give your overworked liver a bit of a break.  Unfortunately, you are not crazy about taste even though they are mixing it 2/3 formula and 1/3 milk.  Apparently today they brought in the vanilla version of the formula and you seem to be doing a bit better with it.  I hope it does its job because it is over $50 a can and we had to have a prescription just to get it.  We are praying our insurance will cover at least some of the cost since you may be on it for a while.

I also had a worrisome thought about when you are home.  You have only eaten out of the hospital's bottles, so I figured I would take the ones I have and let you try them out just in case.  The nurses will be feeding you with them tonight and we will see how you do.  I just didn't want you to get home and decide that you hate them and then we are frantically rushing to get something else.  Maybe you will be easygoing like your sister was when she was a baby...  Just go with it, Rhys!

It's an odd feeling bringing home a baby from the NICU.  I imagined before you were born that we would be confident in bringing you home right away because we are no longer those nervous first-time parents.  But I still think of you as tiny and fragile, and I feel like we are back at square one, just as nervous and unsure of myself as I was almost four years ago with Cameron.  It will be a strange new thing just to walk around with you since you have been hooked up to monitors this entire time!

We have been waiting for these past three weeks to bring you home and now the thought of it is equally exciting and nervewracking.  We will have a lot to manage with your doctor appointments and medicines and special mixtures for every bottle.  But we are so thankful that you are still fighting, still growing, still so tender and sweet each day.  We cannot wait to shower you with snuggles and kisses in our own house.  So we will see tomorrow.

Mama needs to go to bed!  Love you.