Meghan’s first full hospital day. As expected, it’s a wall-to-wall syllabus of consultations, tests, and monitoring sessions. The medical team is committed to designing a treatment plan that is both comprehensive and measured. The day is a revolving door, but it’s the first, and every new conversation is a puzzle taking shape.

By the numbers! Day 1.5:

• 24/7 oxygen treatment, via cannula
• 4 hours roundtrip: Casey’s journey to bring Meghan a trunkful of comforts from home, to share a quick kiss, and then to head back to Sister Bay to collect Lu from school
• 2 hours! The duration Lucy is permitted to visit with her daddy, any day. (As of 31 Jan, just one day before admittance, the hospital policy changed on minor visitation. For our family, clearly this is a magical number, full of light and sparks of Lu’s shouting, uncombed hair, and bright-eyed joy. A truly magical number indeed.)
• 40 minutes of crying (exhaustion, overwhelm, relief at positive BPPs, worry about Baby C’s lack of growth)
• 25 loving text messages and missed calls from our tribe
• 11 specialist consultations
• 10 staff introductions (all lovely)
• 9 blood draws
• 4 one-hour monitoring sessions
• 2 FaceTimes with Lucy
• 2 tricky conversations about what this all means, and 2 easy assurances that Mama herself is fine and will be coming home
• 1 designated visitor allowed for the duration of Meghan and the girls’ stay (excluding Lucy). So we have a wave from the window scheduled on Friday with Gigi (Jenn).
• 1 ultrasound with BPPs and Dopplers
• 1 3-hour glucose test
• 1 gestational diabetes diagnosis
• 1 glorious, perfect photo of our Baby C, resting her sweet eyes and reveling in not having her sister’s feet in her face for the first time in recent memory. She is working so hard and, as Casey says, we are going to work just as hard for her, for them both.