August 03, 2008 Joshua with Possum

Joshua didn't end up with very many toys as a baby, because we moved a lot, and we were poor, and I hadn't figured out consignment sales yet.  Brian's mom sent Joshua a finger puppet opossum.  We used it for a long time.

August 03, 2008 Friends from the NICU

One of the only way we made it through the NICU time sanely was by making friends.  All of our babies were due within a few days of each other, but each came at their own earliness and with their own problems.  After we had all been home a while we got together to take pictures of all the babies together.

Joshua is on the left.  D is the little girl in the middle, and J and J are twins on the right.  Notice all the fun cords that we all got to drag around. 

Here is all of us families together.

And here is our family.

Sleeping with daddy 7-19-2008

Here is Joshua and Brian sleeping together at my parent's house.  Brian loves the new babies and taking naps with them.  Joshua and Brian took many naps together at church.  Brian would go find an empty classroom and snuggle up with Joshua for a nap.

Our Friend's Baby July 17, 2008

So I recently decided I should finish working on this someday, now that Joshua is almost 7.  So most of my memories will be based off of looking at the pictures, but it is better than nothing.

My old roommate and good friend had a baby 3 or 4 days before Joshua was born.  Only her baby was due in May.  She was a trooper and came and visited me in the hospital, while I was still there even though she was still recovering from a less than easy birth.  She also came and visited Joshua in the NICU.  But not until Joshua came home could the babies meet each other.

They are both just over two months.  I like how the car seats and pacifiers accentuate the difference in size of the babies. 

Just as a side note, before they were 1 year old, Joshua actually outweighed my friend's baby girl.  He did catch up.

First couple of days home-July 9-10, 2008

I don't remember too much about what happened that first day we got home from the hospital. I do remember I had to ride in the back seat with Joshua to make sure he didn't stop breathing or something. I was so nervous to drive alone with him for a few weeks even though Joshua never had any problems. I also remember I got a lot more sleep the next night with Joshua in another room.

The second day I do remember wondering if I was going to have to take Joshua back to the NICU. (I later learned you can't go back to the NICU, he would have gone to Pediatrics had he gone back to the hospital, but I digress). Anyway Joshua was supposed to go no longer than 4 hours without eating. He was sleeping and at 4 hours I tried to wake him up and he would not wake up. It took 30 minutes to get him to wake up. I wasn't sure what I was going to do if he didn't wake up at all.

Fortunately he did wake up but he stayed a sleepy kid.

That next day, my brother came over to visit Joshua. Poor Nathan was the only one from my family that hadn't been able to hold Joshua; Nathan had only seen Joshua once and that was through a window since Nathan was too young to go in the NICU. So he came over to spend some quality uncle/nephew bonding time.

So that was our first full day home with our baby.

NICU Diapers

As I am wrapping up Joshua's time in the NICU I thought I would show some pictures of his diapers. I took the pictures next to a store card (thanks Aubrey for the idea) to show size.

This first one is what I call the little preemie diaper. It is smaller than the preemie diapers that you can buy at the store. They actually have one size smaller that I have seen, but fortunately for Joshua this is the smallest he needed.

Here is wearing the diaper.

He only wore that diaper a few days before he was peeing out of it regularly.

Then he graduated to the preemie diaper that you can buy at the stores.

They had to fold it down because it was so big and to keep it off his belly button.

Then he came home in newborn size diapers.

He had grown into a giant child.

Rooming In and Going Home!

After passing the 24 hour on demand we knew we were on our way home. Because Joshua was coming home with oxygen for feedings we had to stay one more night at the hospital to practice using the oxygen and the monitors. Even though Joshua had not had an apnea or bradacardiac episode in weeks he had to come home with a monitor because he was on the oxygen.

That day Joshua was moved back upstairs into the NICU to make it easier to find him for paperwork and things. They also took out his feeding tube. Brian worked and also worked on getting things ready for Joshua to come home. I hung around the hospital and nursed. That night the oxygen guy came by and showed us how to use everything. Then we were put into the rooming in room.

Before I did the rooming in, I imagined it as we stay in there and if we have problems such as Joshua turning blue or something we have nurses 100 feet away. But every time we fed Joshua, or changed his diaper, or the monitor went off we had to call the nurse. The monitor was really touchy and we hadn't learned how to keep the leads on well yet and an off lead will make it go off. It was disappointing to me because I imagined this as the first night I could take care of my baby, by myself without supervision, and I had to wait one more night for Joshua to be just Brian and mine.

The night spent rooming in was the worst night for sleep that I have ever had with either of my children. The feedings and phone calls were bad enough, but in addition to that Joshua made a ton of noise. Preemies tend to be grunty and he grunted and groaned noisily all night long.

The next morning at 7:00 people started coming into our room to get things ready to grow. After no sleep the night before we were moving kind of slow that morning, not to mention Joshua still needed to be taken care of, and one nurse openly wondered why we were going so slow. But the nurses also gave us this adorable card and wished Joshua a happy 2 month birthday. Joshua was in the NICU exactly 2 months or 61 days going home July 9, 2008.

We spent the morning filling out a ton of paper work. Then we waited, and waited, and waited for the pediatrician to give us the clear to leave. Finally someone that wasn't Joshua's pediatrician came and signed the paper work for us to leave.

Then we could finally leave. A nurse has to carry the baby carrier out to the car*, and then I had to ride in the back seat with Joshua to make sure he didn't stop breathing or something. And we were finally free.

*When Minna was born they had me carry her out of the hospital myself when I had given birth 3 days earlier and was being discharged myself.