Ups and Downs

It's amazing how far we can go emotionally in the same day. I even talked Debby into leaving the hospital room for the second time since we came here. We walked across the street from the hospital to the Stanford mall and wandered through Pottery Barn Kids, dreaming together to getting back to the world of mobiles and baby toys. When we came back, we learned that his potassium levels were low and they were going to give him more potasium, which increases the risk of heart issues. Four bags wieghing more than our little guy hung above him, dripping away. In a few minutes, we felt like we were moving backwards. In addition, our night nurse is so much different in "style" than the caring that we got the night and day before. Debby says she's rough with z, which means that when she's doing things like drawing blood or checking vitals, she's encouraging him to cry and scream as if it is some positive indicator of health. Debby holds z tight and tears come to her eyes. I don't know what to do.

Our dear friends who have had babies after us come to visit, leaving their babies in the lobby with Deb's mom so they can spend time with us. They tell us about their babies sleeping habits and eating habits and we could go back to that. Their babies are almost twice the size of z and I can't help but wonder how we are going to catch up. The percentile chart that I tracked so precisely before seems irrelevant now. We joke that we'll tell people that he's a two week old when we get out of here, bring him to a "same age" playgroups and let him track people with his eyes and use his little hands to grab things and touch the other kids, just so we can give him a developmental advantage. It's queit now, lonely in fact. We have no idea how long this is going to take. I'm still rationally optimistic but we're hitting a wall tonight.