a rainbow after the storm

The weather in southeastern Wisconsin over the past week has mimicked our NICU stay. One minute it is sunny and beautiful with the crisp breeze off of Lake Michigan making the smell of petunias and fresh cut grass waft into our living room. The next minute, the sky turns gray and storm clouds roll overhead like stampeding rhinos on the Serengeti Plain, bringing with them fierce lightening, loud claps of thunder, and buckets of rain.

My first week of summer break involved non-stop cleaning and organizing of the house in preparation of our daughters' homecoming. Jeni and I are working feverishly to get things ready, as we have been told by our doctor and Nurse Barb, our primary nurse, that Tuesday is the day Hope is likely to come home. Granted, this is not the Father's Day homecoming that we were hoping for a week ago, but I am proud to say that I will, more likely than not, have the chance to watch a Brewers/Blue Jays game with Hope in my arms. I'm sure our friends Susan, Gord, Aaron and Emily in Canada will smile knowing that the first time the "Brewers Fan Dad" enjoys a game with his daughter will be against their American League rivals from north of the border.

On a more serious note, life in the "intermediate room" recently has not been without its share of bumps in the road. Yesterday things were not so fun. Hope had trouble, alarming frequently and dropping her heart rate. While feeding her yesterday, she began to choke and turned blue. Nurse Mary was able to revive her quickly, but this still scared the living daylights out of me, and made me, for the first time, start feeling a bit nervous about the prospect of caring for a premature baby (and hopefully babies plural before too long). Moreover, our doctor yesterday ordered renal ultrasounds for both girls because of a concern over high blood pressure and kidney functioning. Kidneys? What!? ! This was the first time Jeni and I heard anything about this. Thank goodness by the end of the day yesterday, we learned that the results of the renal untrasounds were "unremarkable" indicating that there were no foreseen problems with the girls' kidneys, and that the blood pressure just needed to be watched carefully over the next several days. Both girls, for what it's worth, had lower blood pressure today.

Just like the severe weather that ravaged southeastern Wisconsin recently, these bursts of unpleasantness were relatively short lived, but intense nonetheless. Despite turning blue briefly yesterday, Hope is still on track for a Tuesday discharge. Gracie has increased her feedings, and, with a little love and luck, will not be too far behind her sister. She just needs to gain weight consistently and move up on her feedings. She is already up to nippling 5/8 feedings, so I don't think she should be more than a week to ten days behind her sister.

Until then, Mom and Dad will spend the remainder of hopefully their last Saturday night together as a two-some living in our house attempting to put together Rainforest Bouncey Seats and decorating the babies' room in preparation of brining our family home.

To close, when Jeni came home from the hospital tonight (driving through another series of thunderstorms that rampaged through our area) she called me outside to show me the magnificent rainbow that arched over our backyard. For us, this served as a visual illustration that after a storm sometimes God can bless us with a thing of great beauty. Hopefully, this metaphor will live out in our lives during the upcoming week.


A beautiful rainbow viewed from the Piper patio.







Jeni lathers up Baby Grace during her bath.





Baby Hope is now on "on demand feedings" (gosh, that sounds like a Time Warner Cable commercial). We learned from our most recent call to the NICU that she took 50 ccs at her last feeding! "Big Beefy" is getting ready to come home!