February 12, 2011 - Homecoming (again!)

Today, on Noah’s 3-week birthday, he came home from the hospital for the second time. He has been in the hospital for the last four days with a viral infection that made him very sick. It was a scary and sad experience for us, his family, and I can only imagine how miserable the whole ordeal was for him. The details don’t really matter now and I don’t even have the energy to record them all here. He was really unwell at the beginning of the week; he was poked and prodded and jabbed and stuck too many times; he was tested for all kinds of possible infections. We are grateful that nothing extremely serious, like meningitis, was detected and that all tests pointed to a viral infection instead of a bacterial one. We’ll probably never know exactly what or who it was that made him sick, but we do know now that he is well again now and that is all we care about. His fever is gone, he is eating again, he can stay awake and alert for extended periods of time now, and I swear he keeps sneaking me smiles when nobody else is looking. He is truly our little fighter – Rocky for sure! – and we have been so impressed with how much strength he has already in his brief 21 days of life.

Being in the hospital with Noah meant that I didn’t have very much time with Grace this week, which of course broke my heart given that she was already having a difficult time dealing with sharing her Mama at home. Kirsten and Hans were in Mombasa – wonderful for them, just bad timing for us! – so Kristoffer and Rose did a great job of keeping Grace on schedule and pretty happy all week. With nightly visits to the hospital to see Mama and Noah, she managed to be brave and strong and happy and amazing during my 4th extended hospital stay since October. Kristoffer was a bit under the weather himself at the beginning of the week (yes, perhaps their illnesses were connected) but managed to be a really wonderful father, even if maybe he didn’t devote his usual 110% to his job (they had to settle for 99% this week). I was already tired before Noah got sick and am physically and emotionally exhausted at this point, but the peace of mind I have about Noah’s health will surely help me recover some energy and rest in the next week.

So, phew. Crisis over, we are home now. We are grateful that so many people’s prayers helped Noah get better and we feel blessed that nothing more chronic or serious caused his illness. A newborn baby’s health is nothing to mess around with; his life was already so precious to us and is now even more so after what he went through this week. Our hearts go out to those parents whose children battle more serious or long-term health problems…it is nothing short of torture to watch your child be in pain or suffering and be unable to quickly make it all better. We could barely stand it for 4 days and we really know how lucky we are.

It has never been so wonderful to come home.

I did not take any pictures of Noah when he was sick...I have way too many mental pictures that I can't erase and they didn' t need digital companions. But this was Noah last night, after he was well and it was decided we could come home today, just before they took out his central line.

And this is our healthy boy today. Home again home. Three weeks old.

LMW