James and Claire

The day after....

We woke up late and then immediately tried to find a better place to stay. Our first thought was to find a Sheraton Suites, because we had stayed in one of those in Houston when Nicholas was born. No luck, all they had was a plain old Sheraton. As I was using my Garmin GPS unit to find the Sheraton, Christy was on the phone with them. As we were driving, Christy insisted that she had seen the Sheraton out the window in a different direction than where we were heading. I told her that there must be two Sheratons because my GPS would never lie to me. So I followed the GPS instructions until we arrived at some other hotel, whose name escapes me, but it was not the Sheraton. I received the 'I told you so' look that all husbands love.

The doorman at this other hotel indicated that this happens to people all the time (which made me feel a little better) and gave us directions to the hotel that Christy saw. As we were driving Christy called the Sheraton and the best they could give us for a standard room was $250 a night. Sadly, we never actually did make it to that Sheraton.

As we were driving all over the city, both of us on the phone with various places, I found a Doubletree Guest Suites hotel downtown. I explained our situation to the first line of sales representative, who quickly passed me to the sales manager, a very nice woman named Pearl. I explained the chaos that had been our last 24 hours and the chaos that would likely be the rest of my natural life. She took pity on me, and offered us a fantastic suite for $149 per night. She took my cell phone number and said they would call when it was ready.

Having the lodging settled, we felt a little better. We headed to the hospital to see our babies. When we got there, they both were attached to all sorts of breathing stuff, but appeared much more comfortable than they had been the night before. We talked to the doctor, who told us that their breathing was being aided by CPAP. I don't know what that stands for, but I think the A might be for AIR. The doctor explained it to me like this....their lungs were having trouble expanding to take in air. The CPAP was like sticking your head out of a car window, in that the air pressure sort of forces the air in.

While in the NICU, we started to familiarize ourselves with all of the instruments, the numbers they displayed, and the sounds/beeps that they produced. We quickly found the Oxygenation percentage -- and its 'beep zone' was anything above 95 or below 85. Over the course of the next several days, they would make adjustments to everything depending on the ability to stay in between.

The heart rate happy zone was 100 to 200. It's a good thing Christy and I were not attached, because I think our hearts were still beating about 11,000 times per minute.

The birth mother's father had been on a camping trip with B's sister, and had not arrived back until late Wednesday night. He was very anxious to meet us, so we scheduled a 12:00 lunch with them at the Upper Crust Bakery.

We sat and ate lunch with James and Claire's biological grandparents, who are truely wonderful people. In a different situation, I can see us being friends. You would think that it would have been at least a little uncomfortable, but it wasn't. They were very easy to talk to and we all had one thing in common...we were not really sure what to make of all this. I think they both got some peace of mind that the children were going to be in good hands, and we really enjoyed spending time with them so we can tell James and Claire what wonderful people they are. During the lunch, they mentioned Pappasito's. Pappasito's was (with Chuy's) our other favorite Tex-Mex place from our Houston trip a few years ago.

As we were leaving lunch, Pearl called and told us our room was ready. She also insisted that we tell the front desk to get her when we arrived. So we headed over to the Doubletree Suites and went to check in. When we got there, we asked for Pearl and she came out to give us hugs and look at pictures. She is a very nice woman. We headed up to the room and were thrilled with the accommodations. We had a big bedroom with a King, a living area with pull-out couch, a table to do work on, and a kitchen.

As Christy unpacked, I caught up on e-mail and phone calls. Once unpacked, we headed back to the hospital to see the twins. At 6:00, they kicked us out for shift change.

I suggested we go to Pappasito's for dinner. When we got there, I was a little torn because it happened to be right next to Fuddrucker's. We stayed the course and devoured spectacular enchiladas.

After dinner, Christy had me drop her off at the hospital...while I was forced back to the hotel to begin updating the web site. I was not happy about this, but decided to be a team player and do it.

When I went to pick her up a few hours later, she was very calm and happy. Too calm and happy. 'What did you do?" I asked. It was then I was informed that, as I slaved over the web site, my traitor wife had been the first to hold our son James. Her only punishment for this behavior is that she had not taken the camera and thus there is no photographic evidence.