Calvin Ajax Moeckel!

Whew. Neither of us got much sleep last night, Sam lying awake in the hospital and me kind of lying there in bed with startling images flashing before my eyes. This morning we were told that Sam would probably get a chance to hold Calvin for the first time in the afternoon, which was a pretty huge boost. The initial shock of seeing all the tubes and wires had worn off a little, but it was a pretty a helpless feeling only really being able to stick you hand in the incubator to touch him. Here are a few pictures of Team Moeckel the Next Generation from the afternoon.

First real mother-son contact:

A family self-portrait of exhaustion:


Mid-squawk, being put back in the incubator:


As you can see, he's got some filling out to do, and it's not really a whole lot of fun with the tubes and wires all over the place. It's going to be stressful going for the next while, but it was really great to see him resting with Sam for those few minutes. Hopefully, in the end, this episode will just make the first chapters of his biographies a little more interesting, and make his future world-dominating exploits all the more impressive.

For the next few months, our life is going to be pretty focused on Calvin. I think our plan is to use this blog as a place for people who are interested to check in and see how things are going. So, whenever you're curious, pop in and check it out.

At the moment: his first 24 hours went by pretty uneventfully. He's getting some help with his breathing (CPAP), has an IV, a feeding tube ready to go but not in use yet, is being given some antibiotics as a precaution, and is getting some blue-light phototherapy.