Here's hoping

So, Asher has one more apnea/sleep study test he has to pass on Monday, and if all goes well, it looks like he'll be coming home on Tuesday. So keep you fingers crossed for us everyone. It will be wonderful if we can finally get our little family all together.

Rock Stars

Call me superficial, but when I knew Sam only from afar in college, there were a couple of major factors that made me decide that, 'hey, I think i'd like to get to know this guy a little better.'
1- He had an awesome jeep that I would constantly see cruising down the Rexburg streets with the top down, piled full of rowdy people. 2. He was in a band. And he was the singer. And he made smoldering eyes when he sang. And I liked it.

Anyway, probably not the two most reliable criteria that girls should use to decide they want to start dating someone, but hey, it worked for me.

This summer, I got to relive my fascination with Sam the Rock Star when his medical school buddies dragged their drums and guitars into our spare bedroom for the duration of their break from school.

It was good times, and lots of music that Riley, a boy who loves noise above all else, mysteriously thought was too loud. So I didn't actually get to hear Sam and his band much because Riley and I would go elsewhere during their rehearsals. If it was up to me, we totally would have stayed because even though I'm 26 now, I'm still totally hip and love being in a place where the music is so loud it knocks pictures off the walls. Really. I am.

The bits of their songs that I did hear were all fantastic though, and Sam's singing eyes are just as smoldering as ever. Too bad I ruined their public debut by landing myself in the hospital. But hey, it's good to know there's a backup plan if Sam decides the doctor route isn't for him.

NICU Blahs

For those of you who haven't heard, still no Asher home from the hospital yet. Apparently, my kid is a born puker.

The problem is that his little stomach just couldn't handle being stretched when we were feeding him every three hours. He was throwing up all of his food and losing more and more weight every day. So the doctor decided they needed to stick in a tube and start him on continuous feeding--where he's drip-fed teeny amounts of milk all day long.

That decision was made a week ago, and it was a sad, sad, day because we knew it meant that it was going to be awhile before our baby was coming home. I was in the room when the nurse came in with the orders to switch from bottle feeding to tube feeding. Asher was hungry because it was time for him to eat now. But instead of being given a bottle to drink in 30 minutes like he was used to, the nurse put him on a drip line that took four hours to feed him the same amount. All I could do was sit there and hold him while he squirmed and cried and his little stomach growled. It took about two hours for him to start feeling full, and it was awful.

It's also been hard having to prioritize my children. One child is chock full of endless amounts of energy, hates sleeping with a passion, and requires constant attention to avoid bodily damage to himself and others. The second child sleeps all day long and has his own team of qualified caregivers. I bet you can guess which kid gets most of my time.

I try to spend a couple of hours at the hospital a day. Some of the time, baby is awake, but most of the time he isn't. My biggest fear is that he's going to forget who I am. It's impossible not to dwell on the hundreds of hours of his little life that I've already missed being a part of. It's hard to hold him and breathe in that wonderful newborn scent and realize that I have absolutely no idea when he'll be coming home. It could be one or two or three weeks. Or, it could be more (though I refuse to think about that right now.)

But, before I put my hormonal little self in tears, it might be time to dwell on a few positives.
---There is nothing wrong with Asher that a few weeks of maturation won't cure.
---We are living off of student loans and a net income of, well, not very much. Why is this a positive? Because it means that good old Uncle Sam will be footing all of our medical bills. My week-long hospital stay alone was almost $14,000 and I don't even want to guess what Asher's will be.
---I am finally feeling completely well and back into my pre-prego jeans. Bye bye elastic waist bands, hello buttons!

And, thanks again to all of you who have been praying for us or who have called or left comments on the blog. It really does mean a lot.

This is funny, yes?

I'm not sure if I just needed a laugh or what last night, but I thought this was pretty funny. I will admit to liking the book, but I'm pretty sure the movie is going to be a total bust.

Updates

Still no Asher at home yet, but he is progressing all the time and we think he'll be able to leave the hospital by next Wednesday or so. Today, the nurses are hoping to take him off all of the oxygen and they have removed his iv because he has finished his antibiotics, so we'll see how he does with that.

Two incredibly exciting things have happened 1-I got to hold him for the first time yesterday. YAY for that. Took look enough.
2-Riley puked everywhere in the NICU. For those of you not familiar with the NICU, it's the most sanitary, germaphobic place on earth. You scrub in before you even walk through the double doors. Then, you walk into the baby's room and they tell you to douse your arms and hands with sanitizer again.
Anyway, Riley has had a bit of a runny nose and we spent five minutes convincing the nurse it was okay to let him in. No, he hadn't been coughing. No, he wasn't going to be touching the baby. Yes, his snot had been clear, and no, of course, he hadn't been running a fever or anything like that.
Well, we walk into the room and the first thing he does is start coughing. Then, his mega gag reflex kicks in and he spews half-digested ravioli all over the room. The poor nurse had a look of pure horror on her face. "He can't be in here, he can't be in here," she kept saying over and over again. We cleaned him up and rushed him out as quickly as humanely possible. The next day, they left a love note for us on our sign-in sheet. "Riley CAN NOT visit again until he is symptom free for three days. There can not by any vomiting in the NICU."
Poor Riley. He would be the one kid in hospital history who gags and throws up in the most sterile environment on earth. Hopefully they've forgiven us for that by now.

Empty Hands

Babies do not belong in plastic incubator boxes and nondescript hospital rooms.

But, that's where my baby is right now, tucked away in a plastic box in the NICU with all kinds of wires and monitors taped to his little baby body.

Yep, you guessed it. It's been an eventful week on the Homefront.

Asher David McMurry was born on Sunday, Aug 31 at noon-ish. He weighed 5lbs 13 oz and made his big debut about a month and a half before his scheduled due date. It's been nearly a week now, and I haven't been able to hold him yet.

You want to know what's been the hardest thing for me to deal with? All of this is probably my own fault. I had been feeling really off for a couple of weeks and horribly ill for a couple of days. I waited until I had 104 degree temp to call my doctor and say, "Ummmmm.. My body feels like it's being drug through a burning pit of fire. Maybe I should come in for a checkup?" Because, heaven forbid, that I would call him when I wasn't really sick and be thought of as a wimp or something.

Anyway, my doctor pretty much took one look at me and decided I needed to be admitted. For the next two days, I had my own team of doctors and nurses poking their heads in and trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with me and why my white blood cell count was so freakishly high (I think they finally settled on an upper kidney infection and pneumonia).
But my pulse and heartrate kept dropping lower and lower and, apparently, according to rumor, I was doing quite a bit of hallucinating. Then the contractions started and the doctor made the decision that I wasn't going to get any better until they delivered the baby.

Sam and I had approximately ten minutes to prepare ourselves for the fact that the baby was coming now and I was wheeled into the operating room for an emergency c-section. Asher came out screaming and crying and bigger than anyone expected.

I'm glad I wasn't really around for what happened next. They had stitched me up and taken me to the ICU when Sam decided to run to the nursery to check on the baby. The nursery doors were slammed in his face by an aggravated nurse who muttered something about a procedure. But before they closed the doors, Sam caught a peek of a team of doctors rushing around a baby--our baby--whose lungs were crashing. The doctors were solving the problem by stuffing a breathing tube down his throat.

Luckily, Asher stabilized quickly and is now just on oxygen. He still isn't eating on his own so we don't know when he'll be able to come home. All of you out there who have been praying for us, thank you. I came home from the hospital yesterday, and really and truly have felt the power of your prayers in my quick recovery and the inspired decisions of doctors. But I'm going to ask you to keep praying for little Asher a while longer, if only so he can come home that much more quickly.

Poor Sam has had the weight of the world on his shoulders this week. He had to bare the brunt of having both a sick wife and a sick baby in the hospital, and I know it was one of the hardest things he has ever done. But watching his strength and seeing the love and concern written all over his face has reminded my all over again why I married him.

To all you friends and family out there who have done so much for us, I can't say thank you enough. My inlaws drove all the way up from Texas to keep Riley for the weekend when I was so sick. Then, they came right back again three days later to see the baby and drop Riley off. My mom bought a last minute airplane ticket to come in make everything better, like moms always do. And my friends all seemed to know exactly when to call or stop by when I was feeling my lowest and really needed a visit to cheer me up. Thank you guys so much!

I will try my hardest to follow up with some pics in the next day or two.