Got home from work this evening to a very happy wife. She'd spent 4 hours at the hospital with Lucy, with the highlight being allowed to give Lucy her first mummy-cuddle. This involved Robs leaning back in a recliner, and three nurses manipulating Lucy and all of her monitoring lines and equipment to enable her to lay still on mummy's chest outside her humidicrib for 20 minutes. Even as I write this 9 hours later you still can't wipe the smile off my wife's face.

The other reason for her upbeat mood, was being given some home truths by Lucy's nurse for the day, Rikki. It was explained that we were well and truly entrenched in the 'honeymoon' phase - Lucy still has a healthy dose of positive pregnancy-type hormones kicking around her system at the moment, which is normal post-delivery. However, in the few days these levels will decrease and Lucy's little body will realise that she's not built to survive in the outside world just yet and she'll go through many troughs whilst she struggles to adapt. Rikki also said to prepare ourselves for when Lucy will pick up her first infection. (That's when, not if.) Apparently it's normal for these little preterm gems to pick up 4 or 5 in the course of their NICU stay, so we were encouraged to not let the fact that she hasn't had one yet lull us into a false sense of security.

So why would this negatively-tinged forecast make my wife happy? I suppose being a nurse herself means that she has seen the value in being straight with patients as opposed to bullsh-tting them. Does it make the whole thing ironic? Maybe. Is it unexpected? Perhaps at first, but is it genuine? Most definitely.

And just so we remember we're the proud parents of two beautiful children, here's a photo from the weekend of me horsing around with Oscar. I love this little legend.

L