DAY 7: JULY 13, 2008

Today was a really good day :) Finn made lots of progress. They took him off the bili lights, off the oxygen, and removed the tube that was draining his stomach, as it had progressed from bile and blood to clear fluid. He is also maintaining his body temp well, so he's off the warmer as well and will likely be moved into a crib soon, and out of his private room. As much as I like having a private room because of the . . . well, privacy! - his being moved out of a private room is a great sign of his progress.

I took Kevin and Joey with me to see Finn this morning, and Joey, especially, couldn't get enough of touching him and loving on him.





Later, Michael and I went back together and spent a couple of hours with him. It's so nice to see his face without it being obscured by the tube in his nose and the nasal canula. He really is a cutie, and I see a lot of Kevin as a newborn in him. It's so funny - he hardly looks like a Morguess. All the Morguess babies are born with dark curly hair and brown eyes, and here we have a blonde-haired, blue eyed baby.

He's much calmer and more peaceful now that he's able to be swaddled again.









Michael and I stopped at Barnes & Noble before we went to the hospital to see if we could find any books on DS. They had four, and we bought all of them :/ And as we were waiting in line, there was a girl with DS also in line. Michael casually stretched and looked at me and whispered, "Coming out of the woodwork, huh?" Yup. Just like when we had the twins, we were under this misguided notion that twins were rare - nope! Suddenly there were twins everywhere. I have a feeling it will be very similar with DS . . . probably just because we are hyper-aware now.

We've struggled a bit about what to tell the kids, and we kind of came to the conclusion that none of this Down Syndrome stuff is going to mean much to the younger kids. They're probably too young to notice that anything might be "different" about Finn, and that's fine. But we did come to the conclusion that we needed to tell Kevin, because he's old enough to notice not only differences, but whispered conversations between me and Michael, and he's entitled to not be shut out. So when we got home, he noticed the Barnes & Noble bag (of course - his favorite store), and asked what we got, so it was a good conversation opener. I didn't make it all serious by taking him in the bedroom and sitting him down and making it all seem scary. I just told him in the kitchen that Finnian has something that's called Down Syndrome (he's heard of it but wasn't sure what it was), that we aren't sure what it's going to mean for him. He asked some questions, like what makes DS people different, and we told him that sometimes they're slower to learn things and to be able to do certain things, and sometimes they have special health issues, but that for now, aside from this surgery Finn had to have, the doctors think he's very healthy and we'll just have to wait and see on the rest. I told him that no matter what, he's our new baby, and his brother, and that's what matters the most.

I think Kevin is sad about it. I told him it's okay to be sad about it, that I'm sad about it and that I've cried a lot about it. But I told him we have to move forward and just love Finnian and give him the best life in our family that we can.

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Some thoughts: I'm glad I didn't have any of the genetic screenings done while I was pregnant. I think knowing ahead of time that he has DS would have prevented me from being able to just enjoy the miracle of a baby growing inside me, and I would have spent all that time being sad and scared. I might even have chosen (or allowed myself to be talked into) to have him in the hospital intead of at home - which would have been completely unnecessary. I'm glad he was born at home, peacefully into the water and pulled up with loving hands, and that he got to spend that first day close to and loved by his family.