My teeny little superguy finally busted out of the NICU and is now safely home with us. We are just crazy with happiness.
He’s actually been home for a week as of today, but we’ve been trying to get the routine down and escape the craziness our lives became over the past three months. Luckily Bear’s been home with me, which has just been invaluable as we’ve been creating a whole new family life.
We had to start with a hot scrub of our house from top to bottom. In the year that we’ve lived here, cleanliness was not a top priority. When we weren’t engaged in major home renovations, I was terribly sick, or recovering from surgery, or some combination of the three. This place needed a boiling before we brought home a baby. I hadn’t spent much time in my studio over the past three months, and once I got in there I discovered that my poor displaced kitties had been expressing their displeasure all over the place.
He’s such an incredibly good baby. He only cries when he wants food or needs a change. He’ll occasionally fuss a little when he wants a snuggle, but afterwards we’ll pop him in his super deluxe swing and he’ll snooze for four hours. He’s still running on his schedule from the hospital, which works out great for us. When he cries we change his pants, snuggle him while tucking a bottle in his mouth, and then he sends himself right off to sleep. I tell you, if it wasn’t so terribly traumatic to be separated, I’d recommend a NICU stay for every baby. It’s like Baby Boot Camp in there.
In still more positive news, Bear has a job. I think it’s actually going to work out better for us in the long run. Instead of just running a skilled nursing facility for the elderly, the new job is an entire campus with independent living, assisted living, as well as the skilled nursing. We’ll get a little more money, a lot more stability, and should a freak thing happen again where we find ourselves out of work, he’ll have a whole new career pool available to him.
But this is us we’re talking about here. Two people who don’t get showered with blessings, but pounded by them. All of our blessings seem to come wrapped in a dookie coating. This time Bear has a big fancy great job, but he has to leave here on the 12th to go to Alabama for a month (A MONTH!!) for training. Leaving me and the Rookie to figure things out on our own. I’ve been having at least one panic attack a day since we got the news.
Also, our little guy is home, but he’s still on oxygen and refuses to breast feed. At all. Spits it out screaming like it’s on fire. After pumping a total of 4+ hours a day, I still couldn’t produce enough milk for him, and the milk I did produce, after taking all kinds of herbs and prescriptions to get any at all, was thinner than skim milk. I think it’s safe to say that breastfeeding isn’t going to work for us. Which breaks my heart like I can’t even say. I’m a total earth mother wannabe. If I had my way I’d nurse this kid until he was old enough to say no thank you. But between his medications and hauling around an oxygen tank on wheels like he’s an old man with emphysema and having to become a single parent for a month and bottle feed this little guy, I really can’t find the 4+ hours to pump every day. I’m trying to make light and look on the bright side, but I’m actually pretty horribly depressed about this.
It’s a very good thing that he is such a sweet little calm baby because not only am I going to have to do this on my own for awhile, but he requires a whole lot of care. We just had our first doctors appointment where everything except his growth looked good, and even that was at least headed in the right direction. The Home Health Nurse comes on Tuesdays, the Occupational Therapist comes on Mondays, then we have to see the Ophthalmologist, and we’ll follow up with the NICU’s High Risk Infant Followup Clinic. He’s on all kinds of prescriptions that have to be precisely measured at certain times of day, and he has to take special high calorie formula to try to get his weight up. The OCD in me wants to start making all kinds of spreadsheets and graphs to track his progress, but I’m trying to sit on that part of myself and just enjoy my little guy for the special little spirit that he is.