2003 Journal Links

John and I just gave our little man a bath and dressed him in a light blue sleeper. While I was washing his hair, a golden arc of urine traveled from the baby into the tub of warm water I'd collected for his bath. John and I laughed, relieved.

"So much for the ultrasound they wanted to do!" I offered referring to the test the doctors wanted to perform to look for any physical malformations in the baby's urinary tract. Because Archie had developed a urinary tract infection while he was in the hospital, the doctors suspected an abnormality.

After his bath was finished, we carried the baby to the bassinet in our keeping room. I cradled Archie in my arms as John toted his oxygen tank. The dogs followed at John's heels. "Chooo, chooo!" I sang. "Come on, ride the train!"

"Ride it!" John echoed.

"I think I can, I think I can…" we both chanted together. Again we laughed. Archie opened his mouth wide and cooed. How fortunate the three of us are to finally spend a Sunday afternoon together as a family in our own home.

Robin and I stood in the lobby of the Children's Hospital Tuesday afternoon waiting for John to bring our car from the parking lot. I balanced Archie's car seat against a bench as Robin held the handle of a red wheelbarrow filled with my and the baby's belongings. Our niece, Claire, and nephews, Will and Ellis, stood outside the revolving door, waiting for me to load Archie into the car. Anxious about keeping the baby away from germs, I had agreed to let Claire and Ellis peer at Archie through the window of our Jeep's back right door. I knew they were curious to finally see this baby who had turned everyone's life upside-down, theirs included, for the past three months. "I can't believe we're finally going home," I told Robin.

A woman dressed in nursing scrubs sitting on the bench against which I balanced the car seat smiled at me. "Was he a preemie?" she asked.

I shook my head no, returning her smile. "He had a heart defect," I responded. My words echoed in my head and it occurred to me that I had just referred to Archie's cardiac condition in the past tense. My chest felt lighter immediately as I realized, perhaps for the first time, that my son was now a relatively normal baby. I looked at my feet, overcome with a wave filled with a bevy of emotions.

Earlier that morning, Dr. Atz had come into Archie's room on 7-C, waving his arms. "So let's go!" he exclaimed.

"Go where?" I asked, looking at John, not knowing what to think or how to react. "Home?"

"Let's go home!" Dr. Atz exclaimed again. "Get out of here before someone changes their mind!"

I grinned from ear to ear. "I won't believe it until we're on the road," I said as I had grown painfully accustomed to the manner in which things with Archie seemed to turn on a dime.

Cathy came into the room. "Are you going to kill anyone today?" she asked me.

"Noooo…" I responded, laughing and slightly embarrassed. I knew she was referring to rounds on Monday when I had threatened to kill everyone if my baby came down with another infection or virus during his hospital stay. Everyone in the room began to talk about how remarkable it was that Archie had contracted Chicken Pox while in the hospital. Dr. Atz started discussing the incubation period for the virus and the fact that Archie went into surgery with the virus on board.

"If we had known, we wouldn't have sent him into surgery," the doctor explained.

"And he would have gotten sicker and who knows what would have happened," Cathy added.

Everyone was quiet for two beats until I said, "Archie just really wants to be in a textbook."

"He's beyond a textbook," Dr. Atz responded.

John jumped from his chair beside the baby's bed and reached for our camera. "Dr. Atz, let me get a picture of you."

Dr. Atz protested briefly until John threatened to include the doctor's photo from MUSC's Web site in Archie's album. "Well, in that case…" Dr. Atz said, positioning himself beside Archie's crib. "Since everyone in my family has had Chicken Pox, I don't mind getting close."

On Friday my mother and I took Archie to an appointment at Dr. Horne's office at the Greenville Memorial Children's Hospital eastside campus. I had been looking forward to the appointment all week, eager for Dr. Horne to see how well the little man was doing. I think Dr. Horne was as excited to see us as I was to see him. "So this is what you look like without all that stuff on your face!" Dr. Horne said to Archie.

"Come back in a week or two and we'll do another echo to get a baseline," the doctor said after he finished the baby's physical examination. And then he added, grinning, "A new baseline." I smiled, too.

"It's so good to see you on this side of it," Dr. Horne said to me.

"It's so good to be here," I said as thoughts of all we'd been through in the past ten weeks danced quickly through my mind. I shook my head. "I'm so glad we're here."