Homecoming

We intended to have a lengthy entry detailing Owen’s homecoming the day it happened. Unfortunately, since it didn’t happen until 10 pm on Wednesday, August 23rd, we put it off thinking we’d have more energy later. Yes, yes, our naiveté really is quite endearing.

Anyway, in addition to Allen’s nose, hair and eyes, Owen seems to have inherited his Daddy’s blood type. Unfortunately, this means that he doesn’t have his Mommy’s which meant that Owen was prone to developing jaundice. Sure enough, the eyes and nose that everyone thinks resemble Allen’s started turning yellow.

Standard care for newborn jaundice is phototherapy, which for Owen meant either being put in a "bili-bed" where his body is encased in a gown and he’s under lit from below, or being placed in something akin to a tanning bed and wearing little baby goggles. Given Owen’s reaction, neither is particularly pleasant from a baby’s point of view. Since he wasn’t embracing the standard of care, he wasn’t really improving that much and so the powers that be were discussing the very real possibility of not discharging him until Thursday or Friday.

We had mixed emotions with regard to this because while we both wanted to get Owen home, the idea of another night of having the wonderfully helpful nurses around…. The latest Elaine could stay at the hospital was Thursday and so we both felt strongly that Owen needed to leave by Thursday. Meanwhile, Allen’s softball team’s playoff game was scheduled for Wednesday night, and since we’d already spent most of the day in the hospital, he thought it wouldn’t be too terrible for Owen and Mommy to stay over for one more night and for Daddy to get to play with Bad Air Daze.

Eventually, Owen finished his treatments and his bilirubin blood count appeared to be in order, but the phototest was still above the acceptable range, so the hospital had to rerun the blood test to determine if he could be released. They finally decided at 3 pm (5 hours after the usual discharge time) that he could go home.

However, because of all the phototherapy, Owen wasn’t able to have another procedure take place, a fact that the nurses forgot until we reminded them. Scheduling circumcisions is not as easy task (which I suppose might be seen as a good thing) and Owen’s was all the more complicated as the doctor that was planning on doing it had to perform three emergency C-sections that same afternoon.

This presented a bit of a moral dilemma, because do you really want a doctor that’s performed three back-to-back surgeries to be anywhere near your son’s genitalia at seven o’clock at night? Moreover, do you want your son’s first night at home to be after such a traumatic day? Now, with all the waiting, Allen missed his softball game (and without their captain, Bad Air Daze lost 21 - 19), but hopefully things will have calmed down enough next week for him to play in the season-ending "Beer Cup".

In the end, Owen went home with us at 10 pm on the 23rd of August and slept for the first time in our room. And while it wasn’t entirely peaceful, it certainly was emotional, and it was definitely a very special moment that we will cherish the rest of our lives.


(click here to see the photos from Owen's first few days in the hospital, and here to see pictures of him at home)