Day 4: Checking Out

Today Shelly gets released from the hospital. She is doing great and the nurses are constantly impressed by 1. how little help we need, 2. how quickly she got off pain meds, and 3. how much milk she is making for Milo.

They tell us we can stay as late as we want today and we are going to take them up on that. With meal delivery and staff on hand to get water, check in on us, and make us comfortable, this is a pretty nice place to be. And the bigger reason, once we check out, we will not have a bed and private room just down the hall from our baby. We will have to henceforth choose between spending time with Milo and heading home to get some rest. No more quick mid-day naps knowing we can pop in to check on him as soon as we wake up. It will be strange to be home without him. We have so much stuff to prepare (much of which Shelly will be barred from doing as she recovers from her c-section). I am hoping to have the energy to do a full clean of our rooms in addition to setting up all the baby stuff so that Milo can come home to a clean environment. Our current plan is to come into the hospital early in the morning to be here for Milo's first feeding (8:30AM) and spend the day here taking breaks now and again for snacks and meals. We'll see how this plan changes in the face of reality.

Good news time: Milo had an excellent night. The nurses spent the night hours incrementing him down on all his respiratory assistance (there are a large number of categories the respirator helps with including adding oxygen to his mix, volume of air pumped into his lungs, pressure of air pumped into his lungs, and breathing rate). By the time we checked in on him early this morning, he was down to no added oxygen in his mix! And much lower on all his other stats. They are doing a chest x-ray now to see if everything looks ship shape and then they may be able to pull the intubation tube out and put him back on the CPAP. They will also clamp his chest shunt if they don't see any more air in his chest cavity and in a couple hours, if there still isn't an accumulation of air, they will be able to take out his chest shunt too! (Ok, none of the nurses have actually said this part because they all just keep saying "it depends" when I ask how long it will be from clamping to removal of shunt. They seem to have had some difficulty getting the shunt inserted in the first place so they are all hesitant to remove it until they are absolutely sure).

Once he is clear of all these tubes, we should be able to go back to holding him skin-to-skin, which has amazing benefits for both baby and moms. Once we can hold him again, all bets are off on what times we'll be here and when we'll be home. It's going to be hard to leave him when we should be holding him, even in the middle of the night.

Feelings:
Excited and proud about Milo's progress.
Worried that I may be overly optimistic.
Sad about having go home (a ten minute drive).
Stressed about having to pack/unpack all our stuff, set up for the baby, and be in charge of all our meals again.

I woke him up by changing his diaper.

Forehead wrinkle to try to keep his eye open.

Didn't work.