In Sickness and In Health

In a marriage, equality is not typically something you shoot for. Be it division of labor, parenting, or back rubs, nothing is split 50-50. Instead, you each do what you can, you share unevenly, you manage to somehow get things done between the two of you, and try to make the scales come out close at the end of the day.

Or at the end of the night. Our nighttime routine goes something like this. Alicia wakes up several times. In general, I get up with her before 2 am, and Michelle takes the rest of the night. But those are just guidelines, which vary based on who actually manages to wake up, how the last few nights have gone, whether there's breast milk in the fridge, and so on.

Oh, and I always get up for Toby.

Toby usually sleeps through the night, but it's not a guarantee. Occasionally he will wake up crying. Whether it's bad dreams, loneliness, past life regression, your guess is as good as mine. When he cries, I go lay in bed with him. This is much easier now that he's no longer in a crib. He quiets down and we both fall asleep. If and when I wake up at a later point, I go back to my own bed. Michelle never gets up for Toby. It is one of those unfathomable mysteries which it is better for man not to question.

Last night Toby was sick. Really sick...when I laid down with him I could feel how hot he was without touching him. His heart was racing and he had diarrhea. So I was in his bed for a lot of the night. Fortunately Alicia was easy on Michelle.

In the morning Toby was still sluggish, but he improved throughout the day. Quick recovery is a common trait in his paternal line. And no sign of Alicia having the bug yet.

But there is other Alicia news...a new word in our vocabulary of things to worry about. This one is craniosynostosis. Her neonatal doctor is concerned that the bones in her skull may be growing together; now is too early for that. If so, she will need surgery...as in, taking some of her skull out. Fun. But the first step is a catscan next Wednesday to see whether that needs to be done. And here's where Alicia really needs prayer: She's not supposed to eat for three hours before the catscan. Michelle was incredulous. So we'll see how that part goes. After that...we'll worry about that later.

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Josh explains this rather flippantly. Of course I'm not taking it so lightly. I am doing my best to hold my worry until after the scan. Well, no I'm not. I'm sad. A bit defeated. Wondering when this will ever end. When will we finally come to the last thing?

Oh, and the cyst. Alicia had her first x-ray since leaving the hospital today. She still has the cyst. The doctor didn't have another x-ray on hand to compare it to, so he couldn't say if it was shrinking at all. Shrinkage really had been the expectation. However it is small enough that he's not going to do anything about it for now. This is a neonatal pulmonologist who said that if he hadn't known to look for it, he would have missed it on the x-ray. So it's really not big.

Okay, little girl is having trouble staying asleep. Her mother was laughing too loudly at Kerry Elwood. So I need to put her back to bed now.

Good night.