All's well that ends up beginning well

Now that things have simmered down a bit, I thought I'd post a bit more about Thomas's first few days.  We didn't mention it in our original post, but he showed up with a breathing issue known as transitional tachypnea of the newborn, so he spent Monday and most of Tuesday in the Sibley special care nursery.  He's fine now, though, and enjoying his reign as Milk King of Rockville.

A few thoughts:

Watching from the operating table as your kid is whisked away to the NICU sucks.  It sucks even if your kid ends up being totally fine and is released after only a couple of days.  I cannot imagine what it must be like for the parents whose kids are in less happy situations.

After I got out of surgery, a very nice nurse wheeled me through the NICU on the way back to my room so I could see Thomas for a few minutes.  I didn't get to hold him -- he was still being assessed, and I was splayed out on a stretcher -- but I did get to introduce myself and touch his head for a minute.  We were still strangers at that point.  He seemed to like my voice, though.  Luckily I have about 37 kids' books committed entirely to memory at this point, so I recited the Runaway Bunny to him, paying special attention to the part at the end where the bunny decides not to run away after all.

Dave spent most of Monday shuttling back and forth between Thomas and me, since I couldn't go see him myself until I'd gotten unplugged from all the post-surgical paraphernalia and could make it to the NICU on my own.  I did get set up with a pump, though, so I could at least send over snacks.  Dave brought pictures and reports, and took my mom back to see Thomas too.

A highlight of the day was that my aunt came over to visit on her way home from work.  She hadn't heard about the adventure we were having, but -- since she'd been at work -- was still wearing her clerical collar.  It turns out that this is the ultimate go-anywhere accessory.  Fabulous Harriette pulled out her clergy badge, displayed the collar, and charged back into the NICU to visit Thomas.  (I should also note that Harriette and my mom look a lot alike.  Since my mom had also been trying to visit Thomas, I think half the hospital staff thought my mom had somehow scored a clerical collar -- possibly by bashing a priest over the head and stuffing him/her in a storage closet -- and was trying to sneak in.)

Anyway, I finally got unplugged from everything Tuesday morning (good timing too -- I was just about to pull out the remaining tubes with my teeth so I could go see my kid) and got to visit Thomas and hold and nurse him.  We got him sprung from the NICU late on Tuesday, and my sweet OB arranged for us to be discharged from the hospital on Wednesday night (instead of Thursday or Friday morning) so we could get a headstart on going home and chilling out together.

Thomas is now fully at home and nursing like a champ.  Yay!