More Baby Z

We're home with our sweet baby Z and he's doing great!

It's so nice to be able to hold him without tubes and wires all over the place. He is a darling baby and we are so grateful to have him in our family.

I'm kinda losing it right now- today was a particularly bad day. It's amazing how quickly you can be run down by a lack of sleep. Remind me never, EVER to take all my kids with me to a doctor's appointment again. Screaming newborn, kicking 2 year old, whiny in-the-way 5 and 6 year olds, trying to fill out paperwork, etc.,etc., etc. Wow. Seriously kids? I think the staff was quite thrilled when I left with my crew. And they wanted me to get Baby Z's Hep B shot done. I said, "Are you kidding me? That's all I need today! We'll catch up on that later." Sheesh.

Hopefully we'll get ourselves pulled together a little more around here. I'm wondering if I'll ever get back to doing regular old Holly Homemaker posts again!

For today I wanted to share a few positives from our whole experience at the NICU with Baby Z.

• The Professor and I went to church our near where we were staying and met a lot of lovely church members. After telling our story we were promptly asked to dinner by a very nice couple! We had a lovely dinner and a nice visit with them and were so grateful for their kindness during a rough time. It saved us from eating PB&J in our hotel room. ( :
• We met some lovely nurses and doctors and other staff at the NICU. One nurse in particular was our favorite and just so friendly. She thought we were pretty funny as we sat and talked sciencey stuff and asked lots of questions about the readings on the computer screens and medications and such. She had to ask The Professor what he did for a living because the brainy guy definitely knew more than the average parent. It's so nice when you are going through a difficult thing to have nice people to work with. This nurse, Penny was the only one who saw me cry during this whole thing because she told me that my baby had cried for an hour for the night nurse. That set me off because I felt so bad that I couldn't be there for my baby during the night. She was so sweet and felt so bad that she'd said anything that made me cry! She promised me she was taking good care of my baby and I know she did.
• We were given a place to stay though the Ronald McDonald house and that was SO NICE! Honestly, we can afford to stay somewhere, and I kind of felt bad taking advantage of it, but as we got there in the middle of the night and didn't know the area and needed something set up right away, it was wonderful to have that organization take care of it and have something all ready for us. We'll definitely be donating to that organization in the future because we now know first hand how helpful it can be to families! I'm grateful to all the people that run those Ronald McDonald houses. 
• In the end, we're not sure what was wrong with our baby and how serious it could have been. But, we're so grateful it turned out to be nothing serious and we were able to take him home after about a week. I heard one gal saying she and her husband had tried for over 7 years to have a baby and then their baby came much too early and she was spending a great deal of time ever day in the NICU taking care of her little girl. What a trial to go through for months on end! My sister-in-law and her husband recently got to take their little guy home after a several month stay in the NICU. I have so much more sympathy and understanding of those situations now and my heart goes out to anyone who's been through it. 
• I have healed so much more quickly from this birth than I did with any of my other kids! Such a great blessing from the Lord. 

Anyway, my posting may be erratic, but I'm going to be busy enjoying my sweet little guy. ( :