HOME SWEET HOME!!!

Hi Friends and Family this will be my longest post ever....

If any of you have read the comments on the previous post, you'll know that after 93 days in the NICU, we are HOME! We came home Friday night about 10:00 P.M. We were exhausted and it felt so weird to be here, so I didn't post. (I know....bad me!)

Leaving the RCNIC, was bittersweet. Lots of tears were shed. Dawn was our discharge nurse that day, she was GREAT! We will miss all of our special nurses, drs., therapists, HUCS, and cleaning staff in the RCNIC. Below is a picture of Jaime's last rounds. It is part of the CDH team, whom we LOVE and owe the world to for saving our son's life!!!



We will especially miss our dear CDH friends, The Adlers (The hardest thing that day was to say good-bye to Carrie, sorry we missed you Jeremy), The DiGregorio's, The Luken's, and the Toney's. You have all made this experience more tolerable and will be missed tremendously! We wish you well on your own CDH journey's.


As for our drive home, I have to say it was quite eventful. Our first stop was the A & W Restaurant off of I71 (otherwise known as our "custody drop-off" for Jared and Titi). We stopped to give Jaime a "car seat" break and we got root beers. Not too exciting, we did take photos of Jaime, though. He was amazed by his new scenery.



Second stop was Titi's house! Thanks Titi for being our built-in rest stop and feeding place. Jaime had his bottle...then proceeded to "christen" Titi's area rug! ;-)



Now onto the the next stop. Picture this...adult size O2 cart, Jaime in his car seat, Jared, of course and feeding time. Jaime was totally asleep, so we needed the feeding pump and everything to go with it. Yep, we were a total FREAK SHOW at the Goasis Rest stop. We got the feeding pump to work...sort of. We all ate and left while the pump had some time on it. We got back in the car, Tom went to the gas station...Jaime woke up and pulled his NG out while the pump was still running. AHHHH! Milk went flying everywhere in the car. I had to re-tape Jaime's face so that the canula would stay in, but we didn't have a clue where the tape was in our incredibly full car. What a nightmare! Eventually we got things squared away and headed home. Before home, I called Colleen and said we were in the next city over, she was thrilled, so while I was on the phone with her, Tom drove to her house so that they could get a "sneak peak" at Jaime. Surprise! HA!



After that, we drove to our house (we live on the same street). The second we pulled into the driveway, it started to down pour...it figures! So, instead of taking all sorts of "welcome home" video and pics, we had to run the boys into the house. HA! None the less, we were home safe and sound!





Tom and I were up until 2 A.M. getting things organized to accommodate our new family of four. I spent time writing out Jaime's medication names on the syringes and marking a "fill-line" for each of them (this has been a HUGE help). We learned that we needed more tubing on the O2 concentrator, so we had to keep Jaime on the portable O2 all night. Overall, it was a great night. Jaime slept from 2 A.M. to 6:00 A.M. (he's supposed to get fed every 3 hours, but we were off of our schedule and he made up for that hour when he woke up.) After his 6:00 A.M. bottle he went back to sleep until 8:30 A.M. He had great awake/asleep time yesterday. The respiratory therapist came and was here for a few hours. She got Jaime's pulse ox and home O2 set up and ordered us more portable tanks. Which by the way came late last night.



Dale and Majken came for a visit...thank you so much for dinner, it was absolutely delicious!




Also, I picked up my Grandma (one of Jaime's great-grandmothers) to meet Jaime for the first time. She was thrilled, she told me I couldn't post her pics because her hair was up in curlers-she was getting ready for a wedding! We did make a quick trip to Target and Jerry's Ice Cream store after we got our little tanks, too. We needed to buy a few things for Jaime and for the house. Everything went smoothly.
Now, on to last night...let me just say that all 4 of us are EXHAUSTED! Not because of Jaime, because he slept like a champ, it was because of his equipment. His pulse ox would alarm every time Jaime would kick funny, then at 4:30 A.M., there was a loud screeching, fire alarm sounding noise. I thought it was the monitor at first, but it sounded like it was coming from the bassinet, so I thought it was the O2, nope, it was the "music box" on the bassinet malfunctioning. Of course the only way to get to it was to take the thing apart, but Jaime was asleep, so I tried to get to it through the slot of the fabric for it. Tom eventually had to get a screw driver for me to take the batteries out of it. That was so annoying. By that point, we were all awake. Jaime had a bottle (90mls-his normal is 80mls, he's been drinking 85-90mls since we've been home) Jared wanted to play! AHHHH....eventually, we ALL went back to sleep until Jared woke us up again. Though, tired, we are all well. Jaime is currently napping and Jared is playing Legos...go figure! :-)
All and all, we're just happy to be home. The neighbors two doors down and across the street welcomed us home yesterday. It was great to see them. This experience really goes to show you who your true friends and family are. Thank you to everyone who has supported us throughout all of this. We really couldn't have been so strong without all of you!