I'm sitting here with little man determined to get back to blogging. It's a great way to keep you all updated, keep a record of his progression for my sake, and a cool way for Ezekiel to hear about his early days when he's older. Every once in awhile we'll have a day like this where I think we're finally getting the hang of things. There's about 20 minutes of time where he's happily chilling out, laundry is running, dinner is defrosting, and I have a second to do something like this. Then somehow we get way out of sync and this kind of day doesn't come around again for another week (this is why you haven't received your thank you cards, but I promise I'm working on them and that we are beyond grateful for your generosity! Really, I don't know what we would do without all of your support!) I would love to start from the beginning but that would take more time than I have and I would never get to the present time. So for now, I'll just start where we are, and have the best of intentions of getting a birth story post up some day.
In short, Ezekiel unexpectedly came 2 months early. Our lives quickly changed on March 5, 2010. He spent a month in the NICU while mommy and daddy stayed at the Ronald McDonald House about 15 minutes away. It was much better than staying the 45 minutes away that we live from the hospital! He did amazing considering he was born at 31 weeks, and 5 days. We were able to get two steroid shots in me hours before he was born in order to help his lungs progress. Normally babies that early would have to be on oxygen but Ezekiel was able to breath on his own from the very beginning. The only reason he was in the nicu for so long was to start regulating his own body temperature, to steadily gain weight, and to be able to take a whole feeding by bottle and at least be working on breastfeeding (versus by a feeding tube). We had picked out the name Ezekiel years ago and knew the name meant "God strengthens" but never knew how true that meaning would apply to him. God truly has strengthened him, and continues to do so!
On GOOD Friday, it was a typical morning where I was sitting in the rocker, holding Ezekiel after his morning feeding. The pediatrician came by to talk to the nurse to update her on his charges for the day when I overheard him say "baby French can go home today". I started crying, I couldn't believe they were finally letting us take him home, and it was so unexpected! It was great timing since Micah was set to leave that next Monday for a business trip for a week to California. We were so grateful to have that weekend together at home before he had to leave.
Since then it's been a blur of a month. In some ways it seems like he's been at home for much longer, but then in other ways I still can't believe he's here! His original due date was this past Sunday, May 2nd. We celebrated his "0th birthday" with a cake and Avatar (aka an excuse for Micah to buy Avatar).
He's still tiny but developmentally he's doing so well. He had his 2 month checkup today and weighed in at 7 lbs, 4 oz. (born at 4 lbs, 3 oz.) He's meeting almost all of the 2 month milestones. At about 5 weeks old during tummy time one night he all of a sudden rolled from his stomach to his back and continues to do that pretty much every day!
Well, it's time to get him down for a nap. Hopefully I can start updating often!
