Miles Goes Wireless

Early on in my pregnancy, Brian and I realized that the timing of our baby's birth might be tricky. MBA students do an internship in the summer between their first and second year, and chances were pretty good that Brian's internship would not be in Utah, and would start right around our baby's due date. We worried that Brian might have to leave Utah before Miles was due, and we wondered about traveling with a brand new infant.

Brian did indeed find an out-of-state internship, starting in early June, but the complicated timing turned out not to be the birth of Miles, who came nearly 6 weeks early. Instead, the complicated timing came from the oxygen and monitors that Miles was hooked up to as a consequence. He was sent home from the NICU on trace oxygen, the lowest setting on the oxygen tank, and so Brian and I felt fairly confident that he would not be on the oxygen long. But the pediatrician didn't want to schedule Miles' saturation test until he came back in for his circumcision 2 weeks after the first pediatrician visit, which was just a few days before we would leave the state. And when we did come back in for the circumcision, no one in the pediatrician's office seemed to remember that he was supposed to have an overnight saturation test ordered. There were some tense moments in the office, as we tried to communicate the urgency of the test, and our frustration with the lack of communication.

Miles on Wires

The rest of the week felt a bit like a comedy of errors, except that it wasn't really funny and added loads of stress to an already-stressful moving week. Phone calls were never returned, the time frames we were promised always turned out to be much longer, the first saturation test failed to record more than 4 minutes of data in the 8 hours we had the machine hooked up to our baby. On Tuesday we thought we'd know the verdict by Wednesday afternoon, but it wasn't until Friday morning, the day we were supposed to move out of our apartment, that we found ourselves sitting in an examination room for nearly an hour, on edge and waiting for the nurse practitioner to come in and tell us the results.

To paint the picture: Having Miles on oxygen meant keeping a bulky, 4-foot-tall oxygen tank with 20 feet of plastic tubing in the house, as well as a small oxygen tank for leaving the house. To leave the house with our baby, we had to turn on the small oxygen tank, detach him from the large tank, and reattach his tubes to the portable tank. The apnea monitor was less bulky, but much more difficult to maneuver. Whereas the 20 feet of oxygen tubing meant that we could at least move Miles around the apartment without moving the oxygen tank, the leads on the monitor only allowed Miles to be moved within a 5 foot radius. If we wanted to move Miles from the bedroom to the living room, or from his bouncer to the couch, we had to move the monitor as well, and risk getting cords and tubing tangled,  inevitably loosening the leads on Miles' chest. If the leads shifted or fell off (which they frequently did), the monitor would sound an alarm much like a smoke detector, which would continue to go off until we could turn off the monitor and/or replace the leads. Several times a day, we would find ourselves in an apartment cluttered with half-packed boxes and untamed baby paraphernalia trying to juggle a crying baby, blaring alarm, tangled cords, and an increasingly anxious dog. Our nerves were frayed, and the idea of transporting this whole mess to California was beyond unappealing. On top of that, we weren't sure how and whether our Utah-based insurance would cover it.

Jin hiding from the monitor

Miles on Wires II: "The Tat"

Grandma T. with Wired Miles

We had been told that we'd have to keep the apnea monitor for a couple months, for safety's sake, but we were at least hoping to rid ourselves of the oxygen before the move. So when the nurse practitioner told us on Friday that Miles' oxygen saturation test results were the best she had seen in a long time, and that in fact we could return the oxygen and the monitor that very day, we were ecstatic. She left the exam room and Brian and I hugged and kissed and removed Miles' oxygen tubes and leads, and we walked out of the office with our wireless baby. It was May 31, his due date, and he was finally just like any other baby.

Without the oxygen and the apnea monitor Miles has become, for the moment, the easiest baby in the world. He gets fussy when he's hungry, and wails at full lung capacity when his diaper is changed, but is otherwise very even tempered. He eats about every 4 hours, sometimes even 5, and if feedings are timed right he will only wake up once during the night. He's begun to be more alert in the last week, too. He spends more time awake, and looks at our eyes and around the room, and sticks out his tongue and makes funny baby faces. His strange goat bleating (which we have tried and failed to catch on video) is slowly being replaced with cooing, and sometimes when he smiles it almost seems deliberate. Today during tummy time he surprised me by rolling over from his stomach to his back. I'm pretty sure it was a fluke, but I'm excited to try again and see what happens.

We have been in California for two days now. I am grateful for a long maternity leave, and the chance to leave behind the stress of the NICU and the wires and moving out of our apartment, so that I can spend some time just getting to know our baby.

The Many Faces of Miles I

The Many Faces of Miles II

The Many Faces of Miles III

First Visit to the Scipio Gas Station Petting Zoo

The camera caught us both with our eyes closed...

Meeting Great Grandma (and Scooter)

Grandma J.