Today was a good interesting day in many ways. We are home (yay!), Annie (aka my wife) was discharged from the hospital. Only downside of it all is that baby Luna didn’t get to come home with us. Luna will have to stay at the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for a few weeks, so it was kind of bittersweet living the hospital today. Although, knowing that she is having the best care is a little comforting and makes it a little easier, but still. However, a few great things did happen today. Annie finally felt well enough to be able to go to the NICU on her own and spend some time with the baby, whilst I took care of our 2-year-old (aka Marley). She had time to hold her, bond with her and also breast-feeding her, which apparently baby Luna picked up pretty well. That made everybody happy because apparently that is not very common with preemies. Grandparents also had a chance to come visit and spend sometime with their new granddaughter. And then it was big-sister-Marley’s turn (dun dun duuuun!), she had been asking all day to go see baby Luna.
I was very much anticipating this moment, see how she’d react to her baby sister and it was both a little unexpected and magical. Luna was in Annie’s arms and she immediately went straight to them and try to get a good look at her baby sister. She would look at her, try to touch her head and asking many questions, of course. Right after it was feeding time, the entire time Marley was fixed on Luna and every time Marley would talk, Luna would recognize Marley’s voice and steer her attention in whichever way Marley was talking from. Then Marley, very gently started to give kisses to her baby sister and at that moment is when I almost lost it a bit (somehow the room got very hot and my eyes started to get a little “sweaty”).
I honestly had no idea how Marley was going to react or behave and she behaved like a loving and caring big sister. I’m not sure for how long that will last but I’ll take it for now. She also was bummed that we couldn’t take baby with us today. But she also understands that baby Luna needs to get better before she can come home. So those three to four hours we spent as a family were pretty amazing, my heart was full with joy.
On a side note baby Luna is doing awesome! She can breath on her own and maintain her temperature well. Still she will be spending a long time at the hospital before she gets to come home. We are hopping that she’ll be at home with us by Christmas. We shall see!
