Transitions

Alex has graduated to the "transitional" nursery, the quiet place where babies go to grow when they are no longer critical. He's made tremendous progress in the past two weeks, so much so that it's hard to believe that he was once the purplish amphibian of June 20th. We can now do the things that babies and parents do, things most parents take for granted. We bottle feed him, hold him whenever we want, change his clothes...

So, I am spending a lot more time at the hospital in preparation for his homecoming (perhaps within the next two weeks!). In a normal pregnancy, the baby comes out and the family is united within a couple of hours. Baby comes home with the parents. Life continues on. With Alex, life has been suspended. The past two months have seemed like one never-ending dream in which I can't tell if what is happening is real or imagined. 

We have refused to let ourselves consider what life will be like when he is home and we don't need to go to the hospital every day to visit him. Now, I am starting to think about what that will be like and, I have to admit, I'm more than a little nervous. He still seems so delicate. What if I hold him wrong? What if I don't understand his cues? Will we feed him enough or change him enough? Someone else has been doing this every three hours for the past 9 weeks. Are we up for it?

I had envisioned toting Alex around with me everywhere all the time when we got him home. We would take naps together, go for long walks together. We would finally be free to be mother and son and I could finally make up for all the time that I have not been able to hold him. But, it probably won't be like this. He's likely to come home with an apnea monitor, the bane of so many parents of premature infants. It's a small device that hooks up to your baby and sounds an alarm whenever baby seems to stop breathing or his heart rate slows down. More wires, more loud beeping. More scares.  Just when you think you are home free, think again. Life with Alex will never be "normal".