We made it to America!!

Wooohooooo!!!  Jordan and I safely made it to America.  Let me tell you, that was an experience.  So after several flight time and day changes and unchanges (changing back to beginning plan lol), we ended up loading in an ambulance, waving goodbye to our Japanese NICU staff, and heading to Misawa to load up on a KC-135.  It was hard to leave the Aomori hospital.  Such great staff.  We are so blessed that we were able to work with such awesome people.  They really did become family.  We took tons of pictures and got many cards and gifts.  They really do love our son...and for that we are beyond grateful.  I really hope Jordan can go back to Japan someday to see where his life began. 

We had a really nice transport team for his flight and everyone did their best to make sure both him and I were comfortable and taken care of.  If you have never been on a military flight, it is quite the experience.  So its not climate controlled like a commercial flight.  They have heat on but heat rises so most of the flight my face was hot and my feet were cold.  It is also not made for comfort but it really was not that bad at all.  I was impressed with the smooth ride.  It also helped that I had my little munchkin to keep me occupied.  They opened his flight up for a few space A seats and one family from our church was able to be on the flight.  That was such a blessing to have people I knew on the flight.  I was so thankful that God worked it out like that. 

Jordan did awesome of the flight.  He had to be in the incubator to control the climate and for safety but he was pretty comfy.  He kept his levels stable and even got to wear cute little ear plugs.  Once we arrived in Washington, the medical team started to get him settled in his new home.  They did a lot of transferring of paperwork and medical summaries.  He will need to go through all of the testing again so that they can get a baseline of where he is at physically as far as his development and needs.  Although his medical records were transferred with him, they were in Japanese.  They had a few translated summaries and notes so they are basically working on piecing everything together.

It is now that we start to learn the impacts of the communication barrier.  I learned a lot of cool tricks for feeding him and caring for him.  He definitely got pampered by the nurses in Japan.  Today I have a little bit of an update on Jordan.  First off he has an inguinal hernia.  I did not know this before so it caught me off guard a little.  This is a common ailment of premature male babies and he will need to have it repaired with surgery sometime before he is one.  It is not a major operation and is not causing him any pain it is just there and needs to be fixed.  The doctors also made it a top priority to check his eyes.  The Japanese standards are different than the American ones so the doctors just wanted to make sure they were all on the same page.  His ROP has regressed a lot and is no longer dangerous.  There is a small part of his retina in one eye that is detaching.  Since this is the first time they have looked at his eyes here, they did not know if this was something that was worse before and now getting better or if it is something that is starting to get bad now.  They will recheck him on Thursday to get a stepping stone to work with.  Jordan is also doing really well with his feedings.  So much that they took the feeding tube out and use a resistance technique to help him get better suction on the bottle.  He is so far drinking all his feeds on his own.  Im going to have to practice at the resistance feeding thing....the nurse was great at it though.  Practice makes perfect I suppose. 

Jacobs flight actually got delayed 24 hours so I had to change a bunch of stuff around with plans.  Please pray that things go smoothly for me as I work on getting us settled and then pray for a safe flight for my guys and lucy girl.  So I am definitely exhausted and looking forward to my pillow...again (I took a nap!).  Oh and please pray that I remember that they drive on the RIGHT side of the road here...eeekkkk. 

Thank you for your prayers and support.  Don't we serve and awesome God?  I have been so blessed by how God has everything worked out for me already.  He has things under control.  He knows what is going on and has it planned to perfection.  So blessed! :)