Homecoming and 1 Year Later

Ralphie had his Rainbows teacher and physical therapist over to the house today. It is nice to have physical therapy that makes house calls! Especially with a little guy who is so susceptible to respiratory infections. I'm wondering if families in other parts of the country have this luxury of in-home therapy. We were discussing his progress over the year when I realized that I missed the anniversary of Ralphie's homecoming.

On June 9, 2007 he finally escaped from the NICU and got to come home for the first time. (If you want to read about the things we went through during those first 7 weeks of his life, you can visit www.babyhomepages.net/ralphie until I get his story placed here on this new blog site.)

I remember that daddy had to drive 3 hours that day with a brand new car seat to come get me and Ralphie. Ralph had taken a car seat test the day before in a crappy hospital car seat and the charge nurse was not about to let us out of the hospital in anything else! This was a real letdown to daddy since he spent hours picking out the perfect new car seat that very morning. All of a sudden it hit us - as soon as we walk out the door, he is ours. So we left the building with two seats, switched the baby over in the parking garage, and dropped the hospital model off at a non-profit org. Naughty, huh? It was such a stressful day and I was hoping that someday I'd look back and be able to laugh. I'm not there yet. Especially since we are headed back to the same hospital in two weeks for heart surgery.

So here we are after one year

• Ralphie can stand up straight and tall with a tiny bit of spotting. I have to pull him up, but he can do all the work after that.
• He can hold his own bottle and he can feed himself finger food.
• He can army crawl and is toying with the idea of crawling on all fours.
• He is babbling and jabbering, no words yet, and can wave "hi" and "bye"
• He weighs 20lbs!!! I have no idea how tall he is - I just never seem to care enough about this to remember.
• He is on 1/2 liter of oxygen around the clock.
• He takes 4 medications: Sildenafil, Lasix, Potassium and Sodium.

There were moments that I didn't know if we would make it this far. Pulmonary Hypertension is so scary, I walk the line between "no expectations" and "high expectations." It can be maddening at times.

Praise God for bringing us this far. Praise God for this life changing experience. Praise God for the privilege of raising Ralphie.