Homecoming

So, yesterday was the day we’ve been waiting for for… Lord knows how long. Gus finally got to go home! In fact, I have photographic proof:

Yesterday was been a very emotional day. And a very happy day. My Mom spent the day looking after Charlie while we were signing papers and what not. She said it was like someone getting married. I agree. I suppose if there’s one advantage to having a baby have to stay in the hospital for three months after he’s born, it’s that you get a second “birthday” once you get to leave.

Some more thoughts:

  • I will not miss the hospital. It wasn’t that bad, though. At some point, I kind of made a routine out of it. Sherry would put Charlie to bed and I’d drive out to the hospital. I kind of like driving at night. I listened to the iPod, books on tape, maybe some of DJ Afro’s radio show. It helped to clear the head. And I got to spend good bonding time with Gus that did not also involve changing his diaper.

    But still. Most nights I wouldn’t get home until 9, and I’d be worn out mentally and emotionally. By the time I was done with all that my evening was shot. It was worse than being in school.

  • And that’s just me. It was hard on everyone. Especially Gus. Gus would have been home weeks sooner, if he hadn’t gotten an infection. Then another infection. Then a tummy bug. Depending on what you’ve got hosptials might be a good place to get healed up, but they’re an excellent place to get sick with something else. I personally was sick more in the past three months than in the previous three years. Kind of paradoxical, but what can you do?
  • It was sad to say goodbye to the nurses. The whole staff just loved Gus. There’s something about this boy.
  • Charlie was fascinated with Gus. And he’s a very sweet little boy. He kept making sure he had his pacifier and offered Gus Charlie’s favorite blanket. It’s very heartwarming.
  • The only problem with the fascination is that Charlie now wants him around all the time and gets very fussy when Gus has to go down for a nap. Which is often.
  • Charlie is huge! When did that happen? I mean, when he’s running around Target or something, he looks tiny. But next to Gus, he looks like a defensive lineman.
  • This is because Gus is still so small. He’s just under ten pounds. At three and a half months, he’s still smaller than my cousin’s baby Ben was at birth. Although he’s very tall. He’s a total stringbean. Our project for the few months is to get some bulk on this baby.
  • Charlie still hasn’t quite figured out how he’s supposed to treat the new baby. He gets so excited, but he keeps wanting to poke his eye or something. The last thing we want is for Gus to turn into a source of getting scolded by Mom, so we have to make sure to do a “No, but…” Which is to say, when Charlie wants to club the baby with the remote control (out of love, you’d just have to see it) we have to say, “Don’t club the baby! Grab his foot instead.” Or something. Actually, grabbing the foot works out pretty well.
  • I’m totally biased here, but Gus and Charlie might be the cutest pair of boys in the history of ever.
  • Gus is also fascinated with Charlie. Whenever he passes in his field of vision, Charlie is all he wants to look at. He gets more big Gus smiles than anyone.
  • Despite Gus being released, his treatment is far from over. We’ve got about seven medicines we have to give every three hours around the clock. And he’s still not eating. So he gets fed through a “button” in his tummy. It basically looks like the air tap for a beach ball. It’s quite a process. And we’ll be doing it that way for a while. By the time Gus gets the hang of swallowing, he might have already moved on to solids.
  • Even though Gus is three months old, bringing him home has been like having a newborn all over again. “Holy crap! What are we going to do with this baby! Now we have two of them!”
  • Last night I was drained beyond belief. I slept like a rock. It’s a good thing Mom was around, because I don’t think I was physically able to get up for the 2 a.m. feeding.
People would occasionally say things like, “Man, I don’t think I could take having my baby in the hospital for three months.” But it’s like the alcoholics put it: you just take it one day at a time. You don’t have the baby in the hospital for three months. You just have to leave the baby in the hospital for that day and come back tomorrow. 107 times.

But it had its ups and downs. For part of the procedure to prepare gus to reconnect all his plubming, they had to have the little guy paralyzed. He was completely knocked out and breathing by machine. This lasted for three weeks. After he came out of that, the rest was really a piece of cake. Relatively speaking.

And now it’s over. A year from now, with any luck, Gus will be a normal, healthy boy. He’ll be eating okay and all this will be ancient history. We’ve taken the last step towards getting him home, but really, it’s the first step towards getting him all-the-way better.

And by the way, if I haven’t mentioned it already, thanks a lot to everyone for their support and well-wishes. It really meant a lot to me and Mrs. J.