Some fun in all this!

Santi and I have actually had a few good laughs the past few days in the midst of all the stress, concern and lack of sleep! A couple of them are silly but I thought I'd share them with you.

Here's some background for the first one - just to go into the NICU, we have to go through a major process . . . first we have to hope that the guard is available to let us go through the secure door, or hope that someone will be passing by who will let us through. Then we go in and first thing is to scrub our hands (up to our elbows) real well (reminds me of my dad constantly reminding us kids to wash our hands!). Then we have to put a hospital gown on, then we have to put our scrub cap on, and then we put the mask on. And then anytime before we touch our baby we have to put disinfecting gel on our hands up to our elbows! Santi and I have decided that if we keep this up much longer, our hands are going to fall off!!! What often happens is that one of Nathan's doctors will walk in right after we have scrubbed in and wouldn't you know it, we'll shake hands with him and will have to scrub up again! It's pretty funny in there with all of us walking around all dressed up with the hospital gown, hats and masks on. You get to know everyone by their eyes because that is about all you can see!

Well, yesterday, I was having trouble getting my mask to stay up on my nose, so Santi started to put the strings up over my ears to help keep my mask on! I looked at him and said "don't do that, I"ll look funny!" We both just kind of stopped and then burst out laughing, realizing that no matter where the strings were placed, we both look pretty funny all dressed up in our gowns, masks and scrub caps!!!

We have had the privilege of being in a room with a sofa bed in it so that Santi can spend nights here with me. The other morning, I came back from an early morning visiting to the NICU (it was like 4 am) and Santi woke up and in Spanish I thought I told him something like "don't worry, everything is fine, keep on resting" . . . . .well, what he heard and understood was that I told him "Descanse en paz" which means Rest in Peace! Needless to say that caused another burst of laughter from us!

Then I'm sure that the nurses in the NICU think we're crazy. While we're standing there looking at Nathan or talking to him while he's laying in his incubator, we often can't help but chuckle at all the silly faces he makes (and sometimes it's more than a chuckle, because its just too funny). He makes them while he's sleeping and while he's awake. In fact, he pretty much is not still for very long - even in his sleep he moves.

We've also decided that we're going to have to figure out some way to have lots of noise going on in his room when we finally have a chance to take him home . . . between all the monitors going off, the lights going on and off and all the activity on the unit, I have a feeling that there's no way he will fall asleep in a quiet, calm room anymore!