OUT OF INTENSIVE CARE!

It was barely five hours ago that Nathaniel's nurse said our baby might, maybe, perhaps be moved out of the cardiac intensive care unit today. In the time since then, he's been moved into our room here at the hospital and we've fed him, burped him and dealt with some mechanical questions involving his medical readings. He's out of intensive care, and they're trusting us to watch over him (he also has a few machines reading him for the nurses' station and he is still getting some pure oxygen to help his little body out).

But he's out of intensive care essentially for the first time in his life! The only other time was the first few hours of his life when they hadn't yet diagnosed the problem. Amanda is holding on to him right now, and he's sleeping away.

It's amazing to think that, one week ago, the little guy was newly arrived to the world and this hospital; I had probably recently arrived here to see what was going on; and Amanda had recently convinced her doctor to let her out of the hospital in South Jersey about one day early. It's even more amazing to think that, just three days and a few hours ago, he was in surgery with his heart and lung stopped and machines doing their work for him. Now he's hanging out in our room without a care in the world. (His biggest care seems to be when we change his diaper. He's gotten used to professionals doing that job in under a minute. Amanda and I trying to figure things out for five minutes has made him cry up a storm all three times we've done it).

But we'll learn. And even changing his diapers will be a wonderful thing after all we were worried about for the past week.

Now I think we're in for an all new kind of exhausion as we'll be changing diapers and feeding around the clock. And on top of traditional new-parent worries, we'll also imagine every little thing is a medical emergency as well. It's going to be interesting. But we can't wait.