Day two

Today was a pretty decent day for Calvin. We went and saw him quite a few times, and Grandpa Paul arrived around noon and was pleased with what he saw. Quote of the day: "once you get past the fact that he's small, he's really quite cute".

Calvin is doing alright. He was fed his first drops of milk today (by fed, I mean pushing the plunger on a syringe), so that's good. He had a few episodes during the night and day when his heart rate slowed and oxygen saturation dropped- most of the time he was back in the swing of things after a bit of prodding, but a couple times they had to boost the oxygen in the air he's being given. Because of these blips it was decided not to have him out of the incubator for a repeat of yesterday's bonding time. So we didn't get to hold him today, but I held him up in the incubator while he was having his sheets changed, which was the first time I've done more than kind of hold onto his hand:
and here are two pictures after he was changed. He looked pretty comfortable after that, which was nice to see.


One of my long-standing disappointments about myself is that I'm a tremendous wimp when I see blood drawn. Cuts I'm fine with, but show me a vial filling up in a controlled medical setting and I get queasy. Today I discovered that filling a tiny vial from a prick on a baby's heel brings up the same reaction. Sad.

Sam says hi to everyone- while she doesn't have any internet access yet, I've loaded up your emails from the last few days on my laptop to show her in the morning, and they've really helped cheer her up in some gloomier moments.