Nonimmigrant: Now only six weeks premature

A week is a long time. Especially, I imagine, when it comprises 100% of your life. It was seven days ago that Peter was born ("when they cut me open and stole my baby," as Hannah is now healthily referring to it). Since then, things have gone better than we could possibly have hoped. The nurses in the NICU have taken to putting on terrible British accents - "Pee-TAH!" - and the baby has begun feeding, through a tube that was in his nose, then got moved to his mouth, then back to his nose as he burped too much ("like a man," said nurse Kelly). It's a little slow but hopefully that digestion is kicking in.

Every day has also been a school day. Lessons I have learned this week include:

We transport frozen breast milk down every few days in an ice box. Running through a hospital with an ice box, gesticulating wildly, makes people move out of your way fast.

A PICC line is a "Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter". It replaces an IV so that baby doesn't have to keep getting poked with needles. It's a routine but tricky operation that can only be performed by certain nurses, and needed us to sign a special consent form.

When the NICU calls to tell you the operation went well, the doctor should NOT start the conversation: "Well, Peter put up his best fight, but - " at his point my hyperventilation/blacking out/weeing started " - we finally managed to get the PICC line into him successfully." Yes, that actually happened.

We rented a car for the weekend, usually a painful process of the salesman saying "so where are you heading?" and attempting to foist extortionate snow/rockfall/deer-hitting insurance on you. Answering "I've just had a premature baby and I need to visit him in the hospital," gets the keys handed over without a peep. If I can master crying on demand I am going to get LOADS of free stuff.

If a baby is small enough, you can fit a whole one on a single x-ray! This is known as a "babygram" (the nurse might have been joking about that).

Peter is definitely a Northern California baby. It was explained to us how he would be administered a probiotic yogurt shot, to aid his digestion. Today there was a farmers' market inside the hospital! I keep waiting for the doctor to say "we like to introduce them to organic arugula salad as soon as we can." I was disappointed to discover that a baby tanning bed was actually treatment for jaundice.

So, overall, things are good. There are a lot of babies in the NICU who are much smaller and much younger than Peter - it makes me feel like we're encroaching. Add to that our British instinct to constantly apologise for being so much trouble and I'm sure we come across as charming and eccentric. I'm sure.

We left Pete tonight snoozing soundly in his warm bed, having increased in weight by 50 grams. He was keeping enough food down for us to try "recreational breastfeeding", which sounds like a cure for most male maladies but turns out to be a gigantic nipple repeatedly shoved in your face while you try to sleep. Peter got the hang at one point only to almost drown, and daddy got hit by uncontrolled milk squirts on more than one occasion. Mummy was having a wonderful time and thought the whole thing hilarious. Tonight, my son and I will be sharing the same nightmare...