140 days.

Did I mention that I'm still in law school? Because I am. Currently taking 9 credits, with just one paper and one exam at the end. Oh, and I'm applying for jobs, too.

Really though, my whole life is the hospital with a side of pumping, pumping, pumping. For 20 weeks, 140 days, I have made the hour drive down to the hospital, hour drive back. Many times we'd leave him stable and get a call soon after that something unexpected had happened. Of his 7 trips to the OR, we had more than an hour's notice for only 2.

I really thought we'd be bringing him home this week. I even thought that maybe I should just start putting the carseat in the car, just in case. But the new attending - who I really like, and who happened to be the NICU attending there for Benjy's birth - isn't comfortable with the conditions under which the old attending said we could take the kiddo home. So, at least two more weeks.

I did knock over a few tables (figuratively) on Tuesday and Wednesday. You can't ding my kid for not taking bottles when there hasn't been an order written to help him learn since August 2. He's capable of taking full feeds by breast, for fuck's sake, something his care team told me he'd never do because "preemies just can't." I also did not toss the smug NP, who tries scare tactics on me when I question her recommendations and who when I asked for a timeline on when we would get to go home told me not to get greedy, out of the window. You all would have been very proud of me.

The end result is that we now have a team of primaries, for the first time since I started asking 9 weeks ago, who are committed to helping Benjy transfer his skills from breast to bottle and to representing his interests to his care team. He already went from taking 10 ml to 35 by bottle because of his nurse's observations and help. I'm still kind of aggravated with the system, but we're making progress.