Biggest little boy in the NICU

Going backwards a little bit here.

Little David was born with a SPLASH of meconium! I think everyone attending the birth got a little shower, never heard of that before. There was no "delayed cord cutting" or "skin-to-skin" bonding that are the trend in birth plans nowadays. When they broke my water, they saw meconium and knew that he would need to be checked out as soon as he was born.

Pretty hefty compared to the preemies!

Up at my end of the bed, I was barely aware of what they had actually done with the baby once he was out.

 I saw the pediatricians standing around the warming bed working on something, so I knew he had to be over there somewhere.

At some point a little later, a member of the staff explained that the baby would be transferred to another hospital that had a CPAP machine, a special ventilator not available in our hospital.

They put him on antibiotics in case of infection, so his first week of life was spent in the NICU.

To be continued...

Coming up for air

Baby David was 1 month old last Thursday. Not that I was waiting for him to be a month old to write an update or anything like that, just finally finding the time.

Please, please, please, little boy, stay asleep so I can finish this post.

There are many new and interesting experiences that we have been through in the past few months. Of course I would love to write about them, but find more and more posts staying unfinished. I think I will have to come up with a new system, perhaps taking 5-10 minutes a day to write just a short update.

The other day I was thinking about my English students from this past year; recalling their faces and personalities and the interesting conversations that we had. God only knows if I will see any of them again. Lord, will you bring any fruit out of it? Will any of them be saved?

And of course I can't reminisce about special people without thinking of the orphans. I can picture their mannerisms and the way they did their homework with me-some carefully, some hurriedly...some chatting away and others timid. Many grumbled about having to work on their English, but even their grumbling seems endearing now.

I took it as a good sign that I began to think of these "old" interests (as of a few months ago). The Lord has not taken away my heart for them and I can look to the future, even if it is only one day or one hour at a time.

Happenings

It is too hot to do a lot of exploring these days, but we have had some interesting fellowship. Last Saturday we had a visit from my college friends. During the week we attended a church potluck, visited friends, and had an "international" dinner with some people my parents have been reaching out to. A few evenings ago we attending an art opening and heard an interesting lecture.

It's funny noting how many people are connected to Russia in some way, at least when the topic comes up.

A family friend came over to notarize some documents and shared how he and his family had lived in Moscow one year.

If it's someone from the church where I grew up, then many members or at least someone in their family went on one of the trips we took over several years.

Yesterday we celebrated Andrei's birthday! So far the baby has missed sharing his mother or father's birthdays. But that's okay as it isn't his due date yet. July 6th is his (Russian) grandfather's birthday and potential due date. So we'll see if he picks that day or decides to choose to have his own!

He's here!

...my husband, that is, not the baby!

There were supposed to be a whole bunch of posts between this one and the last one, informative and thought-provoking. But those ones are stuck in my drafts folder.

Since arriving in the U.S. on May 15th I've been doing a lot of resting and preparing for Baby's birth (I don't want to turn this into a pregnancy blog, but for anyone who's curious, flying at 32-33 weeks along was totally fine). There is a certain quietness here as opposed to St. Petersburg. However, there is no running from bureaucracy: medical forms, health insurance, citizenship and spellings of last names are all of a part of the deal.

My sister, mom and friends threw me a baby shower, which was fun, and then once Andrei got here last week, we took a childbirth class and toured the childbirth center.

I've been going to the doctor every week and have met everyone in the practice. Overall the staff have been very friendly. I have to admit I have a slight aversion to all the technology and we did a fetal monitoring session last time that was just stressful. In general they seem respectful of our wishes, though.

Oh yeah, and I had a birthday. Wondering if I should change my blog heading...