*there's a due date

January 18th! Today was (or is) Will's estimated due date. To say the least, the past 11 weeks have been vastly different than we expected in several ways. Here's few of them:
*I didn't know I would start collecting parking garage cards. I usually get to the hospital during business hours so I have to take a card to get in, but when I leave there is no attendant so the cards stay in my car, my pockets, my purse, etc... They are everywhere!
*I didn't know that I would spend so much time looking at pictures of the human heart. And actually learning how it works. :) 
*I didn't know that I would be using the services of the very hospital for which I've participated in fund raising.
*I didn't know that conversations between Chris & I would include the words "I want him to come home" so many times. Or that we would laugh so many times over stories about the staff and other families we are around every day. There's the doctors whose personalities are just asking for Chris to do impressions. There's the lovely woman at the front desk who doesn't want to be at work. And there's the father who knows everyone and everything about the whole hospital. Not just our floor, the whole hospital. Chris calls him the Mayor.


As for Will, things aren't quite as expected for him either. I've been thinking that we will either be unaffected by his future scrapes and bruises and broken bones because they are so minimal in comparison to what we've seen him handle. Or we'll be more upset because Hasn't He Been Through Enough Already?

This weekend I was there when Will was getting another bath. This nurse uses a swaddling method of bathing. One body part is taken out to be washed at a time, while we continuously rewarmed the blankets by pouring on more water. A LOT of blankets got wet, but Will seemed to love it.

Here is a picture of him with no feeding tube, but this was a brief break before getting a new one. He has a mustache left by the gummy part of the tape:

I'm sleepy.

After mustache removal.

 

~Jody