so long Sibley

After ten days in the Special Care Nursery, Jack Lincoln got to come home this afternoon. Given all the change in our life the past few months in anticipation of his arrival, it was great to buckle him in the new car and take him to our new home. And on the way home we happened to pass the Lincoln Memorial and Lincoln Park, which we told him were named after him, while listening to his very first playlist.

While we have only been home a couple of hours, so far so good. After a feeding and diaper change he went to sleep in his moses basket and hasn't made a peep. Not that he knows what is beyond the twelve or so inches he can see, but he seems to be pretty comfortable in his new surroundings.

We did come home with one more item than we hoped. Although his breathing has improved the last few days, a couple of nights ago he had a short bout of apnea where he didn't breathe for 10 seconds. To determine whether he has outgrown this (the doctor thinks so because he hasn't had any problems since then - apparently as a baby you can outgrow something in a matter of hours) he has to be hooked up to a monitor that tracks his pulse and detects apnea. So far the only time it has gone off are when he has brushed aside the leeds.

In two weeks we will take him back to the hospital and they will evaluate whether he can come off of the monitor. It will be nice when we don't have to worry about wires running all over the place (which are a particular pleasure when you are changing a nasty diaper and he decides to start squirming, dragging the wires in places no one would want to visit).

Not sure how much we will post for now on. At the hospital it was fairly easy to write due to an entire team of doctors and nurses doing 99% of the work - all we did was show up once every three hours, shove a boob or bottle in his mouth, hang out with him, and change an occasional diaper. Now that we are solely responsible for his care (poor Jack), it may be more challenging to find time for the blog, but we will do the best we can. And I know that people are probably far more interested in Jack's pictures than my prose, so we will have to start uploading things to flickr.