Thursday, May 7, 2009

Normal Weird

I've decided to try and start blogging a little bit about my own thoughts and feelings about Jack's hospital stay. I've realized that while I never thought of myself as a "journaler" it is therapeutic for me to blog my thoughts. I'll leave the medical updates to Tara and Mom and my blog will continue to be what it has always been: my emotional and mental place to vent. Sometimes it will be spiritual (God is teaching George and I soooooo much) and sometimes just my wandering thoughts.
So for the past day or so I have been thinking about the question, "How do you do it?" in reference to living in a hospital 24/7 for a week now (Happy One Week Birthday Jack!!!!). Obviously so much of it is God and prayer, which I will get into another time, but there is a very weird "normal" feeling to this. So here is our daily schedule: Everyday I get up at 6:45am because we need to be out of our room by 7 (it's a consultation room during the day), we pack up all our possessions and take them to our 5 drawers and locker size closet in Jack's "room" (really a cubicle, one of 6 in a room). Then I pump, which I could go into way more details about but I will spare you, for now:) While I do that George takes care of getting my meal vouchers (breastfeeding/pumping moms get meal vouchers) and puts in our names to try and get another room tonight. We spend some time with Jack, go eat breakfast, pump again, wait for the drs. to make their "rounds", listen to what the plan for Jack is for the day, spend some time at Jack's bedside reading the Bible (Thanks Gideons!), praying, singing/talking to Jack, pump again, then lunch. After lunch usually one of us takes a nap (usually me) while the other prays for Jack and sits with him, then pump again, catch up with each other, pray together. Around 6 the girls, my parents, Tara, and George's family come by. Everyone visits Jack, the girls play, we all eat dinner together, everyone comes up to say goodnight to Jack. By 8 or so it's usually just us again, I pump (are you getting how often I'm pumping I might even be leaving some out:) we spend some time praying for Jack, we find out where (if) we have a room tonight, one of us showers, pump again, say goodnight to Jack, tell the nurses three times what our phone numbers are and which room we are sleeping in. Finally we fall into bed exhausted and sleep for 6-7 hours until we get up and do it again.
So that is how we do it. It's so bizarre and yet has become normal for us. I never would have thought that such a weird thing could be feel so normal, but it does.

"God is good all the time! All the time God is good!"

Here is what we were doing and learning this summer when I should have been blogging:)