Day 4.5: "I Smell Like Milk"

Shelly has been pumping so well! We have enough milk now that we are starting to freeze it and apparently, smell like it.

The x-ray went really well and Milo seems to not have any air left in his chest cavity. His lungs are also expanding normally. The doctors, after seeing this, tried pausing his respirator to see what would happen and he did not take kindly to it. He went into D-Sat (which I just learned means desaturation as in very low oxygen levels) and refused to breathe on his own. They bumped him back up to getting the support he needs and reassured us this doesn't mean he is lazy, just getting tired from working so hard and could still use the help.

While I was in there with him (not touching because I didn't want to disturb his rest) he went into D-Sat again. It was very scary to watch his oxygen levels drop to the low 30s and see that he wasn't breathing anymore than the 25RR that the machine forced him to breath. The nurses quickly surrounded him and adjusted his levels and cleaned his breathing tube and he returned to normal. I totally trusted that he was fine and that they would take care of him and it was still petrifying to see. I am really glad we were not in the room for the other two and that Shelly didn't have to see that one either. After he stabilized I crossed his little arms over his chest and held them in one hand while I held his legs down with the other. This is supposed to be comforting to small babies by reminding them of being in the womb and I really wanted to comfort him (and me after his "event" as the nurses refer to it).

After about 2 hours of holding him like that, I tired of my arm cramping and falling asleep and knew that Miriam and Jacob would be arriving soon with lunch. I slowly let him up and had a good meal and company and got to show off my new son to my old friends. He seemed pretty stable though his oxygen levels continue to hit his upper and lower alarm triggers causing the nurse on duty to roll her eyes and tell him to make up his mind as she minutely adjusts his levels up and down every time his alarms sound. She is pretty funny and clearly taking good care of him.

We are so lucky that Shelly's mom came by to visit and packed up all our stuff for us. I packed up the car much easier than I was expecting and we said goodbye to Milo. I was sad to leave him but looking forward to returning home where we could organize our stuff again and know where everything we needed would be. I was also looking forward to feeling clean again.

We got home around 8 and spent a little time unpacking and organizing the armloads of items we had accumulated at the hotel. I fell asleep in the living room on our bean bag chair while Shelly finished pumping and fell asleep on the rocking chair Megan got for us as a baby present.

Feelings:
Exhausted
Accomplished (I unpacked most of our stuff even though I was tired)
Sad (we missed Milo and couldn't wait to see him the next day)