Jacob is one month old today.

As of yesterday afternoon he weighed 3lbs 10oz.

We’ve come a long way. Here are some of the milestones from his first month:

-Ventilator taken off

-Umbilical IVs taken out

-CPAP taken off

-PICC line put in (that’s an IV from his foot to his heart)

-Humidity turned off in his incubator

-Oxygen taken off

-PICC line taken out

-Feedings “compressed” (a step from feeding tube towards bottle/breastfeeding)

The next steps are to learn to eat and to control his body temperature. And to just keep growing!

One of the best parts of my day is going to visit him for “kangaroo care,” which means they take him out of the box and put him on my chest under a bunch of blankets. We nap, we read, we listen to the nurses gossiping. It’s lovely.

In another month we can start thinking about when he’ll be coming home. They say most premies come home “at term,” which would be March 6 at the earliest.  True this month went quickly…but another month feels like an eternity.

It’s been a wild, difficult month. I can’t pretend I don’t regret the 12 weeks I didn’t get to stay pregnant with Jacob. It’s true I complained about how big my belly was already, and aches and pains. But I wouldn’t have minded putting up with all that a little longer. It would certainly have been easier.

Still, as hard as it has been, I’ve also cherished getting to know this sweet, feisty baby. We get 12 extra weeks with him, even if it’s only a for an hour or two a day.

I wish he had been born later, and I’m glad he’s here now. I don’t know how to reconcile the two.

But Jacob is a joy and a blessing (just like all our children!) and I’m glad to be able to make this journey to health and [something approaching] wholeness with him.

I wrote an essay on the theme of “waiting” for the Mudroom blog back in December.  You can find it here.

I thought, once this baby was born, the waiting would be over.  No such luck.  We started our waiting game over:

First waiting to meet my baby – I had be strong enough to get from the ICU bed into a wheel chair to make the trip to NICU.

Then waiting to get out of the hospital.

The waiting for Jacob to be big enough and free of enough cords so I could actually hold him.

And we were patient, more or less, and got through all of these.  And waited for each set of tubes to come out of Jacob’s little body.

But then there are the two long waits: one for my milk to come in (apparently trauma and massive blood loss slows these things down…) and the other for Jacob to come home.  Not to mention for him to start eating on his own, wearing clothes, getting out of the isollete (the big clear baby warmer).

God clearly wanted me to learn some more patience.

It’s frustrating, four weeks after birth, to get milk drops at a time, if at all.  Not a problem I’ve had in the past.  But the thought of not nursing this baby – this last baby – is heartbreaking.

And so I’m waiting, again.  And praying.  And pumping.  And eating oatmeal (a galactagogue – add that to your vocabulary!) in every conceivable form.  And praying…while pumping.

I think of St. Zelie Martin (mother of St. Therese of Liseiux), who couldn’t nurse some of her children and had to send them to live with wet nurses until they were old enough to wean, and I am grateful that I don’t live 100 or 150 years ago.  Not only are there doctors and nurses and hospitals which have been able to keep Jacob and me alive, but there is formula.  I would not have to ship off my baby to feed him.

But somehow that’s small comfort.  And I want some big, fat comfort, the kind that comes from a tiny, warm baby falling asleep at my breast.

On the other hand, we’re both here.  Alive, when by rights we probably shouldn’t be.  So maybe I’m asking too much.  But I’m not giving up either.  Not until Jacob has tried for himself, and my body has simply refused.

In the meantime, I’m celebrating every 0.1 mL of milk, and waiting.

This really should have posted yesterday, but I, by which I mean Craig, had to figure out how to post pictures since it’s been so long.  Better late than never, right?

The view from our kitchen window.

That is a leaf inside an icicle, if you were wondering.

And the bush outside the bathroom window.

I don’t think I’ve seen snowflakes as fat as we had on Tuesday since we lived in South Bend.  The kids have had a ball (Samantha even got to make a miniature snowman – sorry, no pics of that!) but it has been a little surreal.

And of course all the fun wasn’t outside:

Best place for free boxes:  the hoppers outside Dollar General.  Other dollar stores run a close second.

“Wait,” you might be thinking, “did I accidentally go to a blog about how to change residences on a budget?”

No, you are still at the blog about my thrilling life.  But we’re moving, hence today’s topic.  The wild experiment of two (and then three) families living in one house is coming to an end, and we will have our own place again.

I’ve not been writing much lately, so now you may be thinking, “That is a wild experiment!  Why didn’t I know about this?”

Honestly, there has been surprisingly little to write.  I’m hoping to have some reflections, which may or may not be worthy of sharing, after I’ve had some time to reflect.  Right now, it’s all about the boxes.  And the Clorox ones are the perfect size for two stacks of trade-size books.  No lie – best discovery, after the box hoppers, of the week.  Since books are literally somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of our non-furniture possessions.

Only downside to these boxes: we snagged some that had dryer sheets or laundry detergent or something in them, and the back of the truck and the house now smell like whatever fake perfumey stuff some people use on their clothes.  It is not a smell I would want to spend the day with.  But hey, the boxes were free.

Lucy has been given an extra address book we got for Christmas to be her very own.  So of course she was immediately ready to add everyone she knows to it.  I begged off, using dishes as an excuse.  “But Dad is sitting still.  (Read – sick and resting).  He can help you.”

Lucy (in most precocious voice): “Does Dad know anything about addresses?”

Thus cementing my place as the keeper of all useful information.

Samantha can write her name now…kind of.  She writes “Samo”.  Don’t ask me where the “o” came from.  But lately she’s added an extra circle to the end as a period.  So now she signs her name “Samoo”.

But she has requested not to be called that.

Nor, sadly, Samwise Gamgee.

I was noticing as I got out the winter clothes a couple of weeks ago, that Clare now fits (although barely!) in the dress I bought for Samantha for Dad’s funeral.  It’s funny the way time works, and the things that remind us.

Regarding a diaperless Clare…

Lucy: “That is a pretty big bottom.  I’d like to keep looking at it.  ‘Cause it’s pretty big.”

To Clare playing in the living room…

Samantha, in her sweetest cajoling mommy voice: “I appreciate you doing good.  Thank you.”

I was innocently, or at least unsuspectingly washing dishes.  The girls were playing outside.  Lucy came in to finish preparing the “tea” for her tea party in the back yard, and she calmly announced that Samantha was on the truck.

“On top of the truck?”  I asked, sure she must mean something like “tricycle”.  “The one we drive around in?”

“Yes.”

I blinked in disbelief, and headed for the door.  Sure enough, as I walked out, Samantha was sliding down the windshield.  She didn’t make a fuss, just slid down off the truck like she had done it every day of her life.

I wasn’t sure how she could get up there in the first place, since she is only as tall as the tire.  So I asked.  Did she climb the wheel or the front bumper?  Wheel.  Wasn’t it high?  Yes, she couldn’t do it on her own.  So how did she get up there?

“Lucy helped me.”

So much for my faith in the common sense of almost-five-year-olds.

“Lucy, how did you help her get up there?”

“She couldn’t do it, so I gave her a push on the bottom so she could get up.”

I’m seriously starting to be worried about being outnumbered by these three.  Clare is about to start crawling, and then there will be no stopping them.

At least I won’t have to spend much time teaching them about cooperation.

Me: Would you like some broccoli?

Samantha:  I don’t like broccoli.

Me: What do you like?  Besides cookies and candy.

Samantha: I like ice cream and cake.  And icing on cake.

My mom claims she gets it from her, and that she got it from her mother.  I think it’s time to start making some “nutritional” cookies.  😉 (= sneaky mommy face)