The NICU.

The NICU isn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be – relatively quiet, nothing too hectic, plenty of other parents cuddling their babies and nurses moving quickly but without urgency to care for the handful of babies in the room. That said, the corner with our baby is intimidating, mostly since there is a lot going on in that corner that I've never seen before, and most of it unique to that corner. In other words, none of the other babies need what ours does.

Our little one is nestled in a Giraffe, a rather sizable incubator that I can only assume caters to the smallest of smalls. Beside the incubator stands a very ominous dark-colored machine with more numbers than I care to think about and enough blinking lights to give you a headache. That’s the respirator. Behind the incubator are the monitors for his vitals, which leave you no peace, beeping regularly to tell you that his blood pressure his too high, his oxygen level too low, his heart rate has dropped, etc.

Calder's Vitals

The Jet

We know our baby is special, but the NICU clearly thinks so too. He pretty much ALWAYS has his own nurse.

Calder reaches his new home.

The doctors told us he was doing “okay,” again, which is beginning to become a theme. They are “cautiously optimistic,” and explained that he was doing well but in his “honeymoon phase.”

It's strange to be in the hospital room, having just delivered a baby, but seemingly having no baby. My sister-in-law, based on a dear friends' advice, advised me that I should not devise or get attached to any "birth plan," as inevitably, the birth won't follow your fancy. Heck, I was so far out from having a birth plan I couldn't have had one if I wanted it. But even so, I cannot help but feel that this isn't how it's "supposed" to be. I have no baby to lay on my chest, no infant wailing beside me, no need to learn how to swaddle. BUT. In a way, I'm so thankful Calder came when he did. We were scheduled to fly to Cincinnati the day after he was born - I don't even want to think about how delivering him on a plane might have gone. And about two weeks after his birth, we were supposed to travel to Bosnia, Albania and Montenegro for 3.5 weeks, mostly for work, a little bit for pleasure. I want to think even less about how a delivery in one of those countries -- or on that plane ride -- might have gone. I am so thankful that he is upstairs, cradled in that giant Giraffe in the NICU.

Kate's homemade meal. Blows the hospital grub out of the water!