Springing Oliver from the big house

The days in the NICU blended together one into the other.  I much preferred the new NICU for the privacy and quiet.  My days had a new routine only that I was staying much later in the room with him.  Oliver was making strides and we were getting ready to go home.  He was having a difficult time getting off the oxygen and his doctors were preparing us that he might come home with it.  Justin and I were okay with that, we just wanted our baby home.  To prepare to take Ollie home we had to complete several tasks to prove that we were worthy of this great honor.  We had to take CPR, learn how to draw up and give his medicine, watch several educational movies, lean how to use his apnea monitor, and bring in the car seat for inspection.  Usually the NICU makes the parents room in for 24 hours and have them complete all the cares to make sure they can do it.  Since I had been there everyday since I was discharged and had been very involved in his cares we were allowed to skip this step. 
Oliver had a much more difficult list of tasks to accomplish.  He had to keep gaining weight, maintain his body temp in an open crib, take all his meals by mouth and finish at least 90% for a 24 hour period, be brady free for 48 hours, and pass that damn car seat test.
Thanks to a very high calorie diet Oliver was slowly gaining weight and had finally tipped the scales over 4 pounds at the beginning of September.  He was finally able to maintain his temp in an open crib on the second try.  He looked so tiny in that big crib.  Oliver worked really hard and so did I to eat all his food by mouth.  Sometimes he found it exhausting to drink his whole bottle of 30 ml's (that is slightly less than an ounce).  Toward the end he threw in a brady or two just for good measure so he was restarted on caffeine.  He was having some trouble with his breathing at this time too so he was given another blood transfusion to see if that would help both of these.  A few days after that transfusion his chest x-ray was fuzzy so he was trialed on a diuretic to get rid of some of the extra fluid to see if that would improve his breathing.  The drug worked and he was able to come off the oxygen a few days before we went home.  This meant that we had two more drugs to add to his list.  The day they took off his oxygen he decided to pull out his feeding tube.  The pressure was on to really get him eating everything by mouth since they didn't put the tube back in.  Oliver got to stay a few extra days because he could not pass the car seat or car bed tests.  The test consisted of strapping him in his car seat and he had to keep his oxygen levels and heart rate up for 90 minutes without us doing anything to him.  Once he failed the car seat test he was tried in the car bed and if he failed that he had to wait 24-48 hours to try again.  He failed these tests a total of 7 times, it was so frustrating! 
On September 15th, 2010 I went to the afternoon breastfeeding support group and Justin hung back in Oliver's room waiting to hear the results of the latest car bed test.  By this point I was not overly hopeful.  When I got back to Ollie's room Justin started crying and said that he had passed the test and we were going home!!!  We went back to the hotel to pack up and check out of my home for the past 6 weeks.  We said good bye to the wonderful staff there and headed back to the hospital to collect our child.  We called our parents and told them the news they were so excited.  Once we were back in the NICU his nurse had all these papers for us to sign basically saying that we were being given the correct child.  We also had to sign papers agreeing to take him to the doctor appointments that had been set up for us back at home.  Once that was done I put on his apnea monitor and changed him into his teeny tiny going home outfit.  It was a preemie size and was baggy on him and the hat was super huge on him.  His neo stopped by to say good bye and told him that he had a lot of growing to do to fit into that hat.

 All ready to go home!!!  Thank you OSF for taking such good care of both of us.

Yes that buckle is basically the same size as his chest.  I always felt like it was shoebox with straps.

Justin went ahead with some of our things (mostly a very full bag of books) and pulled the car around to the front.  A PCT carried Oliver out of the hospital and I pushed the cart loaded down with more of his stuff, for a little baby he had a lot of things.  He nurse had filled bags with bottles and nipples for us and even found us a can of his formula. 
We packed up the car and installed the car bed then I got to place my little baby in the car, it was glorious!  We were so excited and so scared at the same time because the nurses would not be coming with us.  Oliver slept the whole ride home and was pretty hungry when we got home.  We basically unpacked the car and tried to get the necessary things in place in his room. 

First diaper change at home.  Notice all the stuff in the crib?  I think everything that had been given to Ollie was in that crib. 

I made up a list of all his medications and at what times they needed to be given so that we could cross it off each time he got medicine.  Oliver was on a 3 hour schedule and different meds were due at different times of the day and night.  Needless to say we had alarms going off round the clock for feedings and medicine.  The three hour window for his feedings began when he started eating so I always said a prayer that he would eat quickly so that I could get as much sleep as possible before I had to feed him again. 
Once he was home I began to notice things about myself  that were different and somewhat troubling, but just kind of brushed it off thinking it was due to lack of sleep and everything that had happened over the summer.  I had no idea of the very dark days ahead.