@ 5 Days

Our friendly little boy Tate will be five days old this afternoon. He's doing very well, all in all. He's able to go 2-3 hours between feedings, and sleeps like an angel in between them. He so far cries only when it's time to eat, and when he's got air bubbles rising in his tummy. He's occasionally in pain because of these little bubbles rising in his belly. I can sometimes feel them when my hand is around his little body--they're like the strings of bubbles rising at the edge of a flute of champagne. But with a series of pats on his back, the bubbles rise, and he'll burp--far louder than one would think a little 20-inch-long creature could. And my response? "Good one, Tate!" and "Alright!" and "Yay!" I'm surprised by how proud one can be of a little creature's bodily functions.

His bilirubin levels are elevated in the last several days, so beginning last night we had what's called a biliblanket attached to him. He wears this fiber optic, blue-spectrum light blanket kind of like a big shirt, and its paddle-shaped light sort of sits on his back, and wraps around his chest. Its light is UV similar to the sun's light that breaks down the bilirubin in his blood that's causing his jaundice, which he can't do himself just yet because his liver is not yet breaking it down for him. They're careful to tell us not to be alarmed--it's all quite common. One of the harder parts of it for me is just holding him each day when I take him to have the bilirubin level checked: they stick him on the edges of his feet to get a little vial of blood for the test. Two days ago they had to do it twice because the CNA dropped the open vial. I was, needless to say, a bit perturbed.
Our little Tate is such a catalyst for exhausted happiness. It's already quite clear to us that our little baby is a very happy, good-natured little guy. He has the most expressive face I've seen in a long time, and wonderful little blond eyebrows. He's amazing.
Keep him in your thoughts and prayers, if you would.