I wish I could say that the lab tech who just came in to stick my already-purple arm woke me up. I am starting to get on a 3 hour schedule, but my brain doesn’t seem to understand that it is supposed to go back to sleep in between! Waking up is happening, sleeping is not. So it’s 5:40am and what do I do with myself? The babies are asleep and working hard on growing and I’m hoping to sleep later.

In answer to a pronunciation question, yes, her middle name is pronounced KAR-is, not CARE-is. I’m more and more glad that we used Charis as a middle name because it is beautiful and so is the concept of grace, but I had a hard-to-spell name growing up AND a hard-to-pronounce last name, so Marissa should be simpler for her 🙂 You should see her sweet little smile…

People told us that we’d become obsessed with poop– what it looks like, how often it happens, etc. It’s funny because Alana, my sister-in-law, remembered to tell me that the hospital staff would be obsessed with my poop as well. It’s all true. I get asked about it rather often and when I call or stop by the NICU to check on our little rockin’ preemies, I say things like, “so, did Zach poop this afternoon?” Marissa had been pooping well and he now is too! It’s a big yay because he worked very hard to develop enough this week to poop appropriately and it took some time. But we can stop mentioning it now 🙂 They are eating and that means other things are working and that’s the extent of knowledge you all need. I won’t update you on mine…

So I might get sent home today. It will be hard to not be here with the babies and have a place to crash during their naps, but I do miss Hoochie! He is apparently behaving beautifully at home and getting great care from our neighbors. We are blessed because our insurance covers extra days for me if needed, and I guess that will depend on these labs taken this morning. I overheard another mom in the NICU answering questions about her insurance and it made me cringe to hear how different it was from ours. We are definitely the HAVES! (Matt can show me later how to link here to my previous post about this) I’m grateful to be a have, especially because our little ones are receiving AMAZING care in the NICU. I just wish everyone could be a HAVE too. The sort of justice and equality that Jesus offers and will bring is so, so desirable!

I branched out from hospital gowns and wore pajamas yesterday. It was a nice change– maybe I can do that again today! In my sleepless state this morning, I was thinking about cleaning the bathrooms at home. It’s so sad that my brain chose those thoughts over happy dreamy ones! Is this post-partum depression, because THAT is depressing!

My last disconnected thought: The NICU nurses have been amazing. They work 12 hour days and just express love all those hours to our little ones (who are definitely lovable) but not just because it is their jobs! I’m so touched to have memories of them teaching us new parenting skills and seeing them cuddle and be with our babies. They also got them on a handy schedule of care which we hope to continue at home! Thank you Kris, Jen, Diane, Linda, Kelly, and Cuc!