Bringing Home a Baby

I’m so sad I haven’t written this post sooner. This day will be burned into my memory forever, but I sure wish I wrote things down from this day as they were happening!
I wanted to get to the NICU early On Sunday because I had big plans of asking Dr. McQueen if we could take our baby home. When we walked in they were doing rounds and we hadn’t missed it! When they came over to talk to us I imidiately asked if we could take her home. He kind of laughed like no way, and as we continued to talk you could see it on his face that he was going to let us. They had told me she needed to be off the hydrocortisone for 48 hours before she went home because if she were to relapse it would be within that time. Sunday morning marked the 48 hours with in problems so I didn’t see why would need to stay any longer. Dr. McQueen had been there in the very beginning of our stay, but we hadn’t seen him since day 4. He seemed to be a more laid back Dr. so I just had to ask. He asked the other nurses who were there what they thought and I will never forget! Diana, who was our first day nurse said “mom is great with her. She knows what she’s doing, and they have an awesome pediatrician” and I really do believe that is what sealed the deal for us! On Friday there had been talk of sending her home on an apnea monitor but we were fortunate enough to not have to do that!  There were pretty much instant tears! We were going home! Right before they were going to leave he said “Ya know, I walked over her with no intentions of saying those words, but I am really happy you get to go home”. Because they had no intention of sending us home it was going to take awhile to get all the paper done and ready and that was totally fine! We weren’t exactly ready yet either! I fed my sweet baby and laid her down in that tin crib for the last time and we were off!

Of course we had to stop at McDonalds for all the soda addicts in my life. We got my mom and Jim coke’s and went about getting ready to bring this baby home. When we got home I knew I needed to primp myself a little, there would be A LOT of pictures taken after all. We also didn’t have any diapers so it was off to Target we went! We got back to the NICU just before the 2pm feed. I was able to feed her again and then we had to watch a CPR video. This scared me so much! She is just so tiny! It was informative and good to watch, but yikes I hope we never have to use it!

Once all that was done it was ALMOST time! After 25 days I had really made friends with all the nurses! This definitely has its perks! Tracy (the character as my mom calls her) was there and she and I became great friends! She was hilarious and we were always teasing each other. The hospital has Cookies at 3 everyday and if I wasn’t there to get my cookies she would make sure that they would be waiting for me when I got back! Talk about service! Well she really hooked us up when we were leaving! Jim took a trip to the car with literally a garbage bag full of diapers and wipes, along with a hospital bag full of bottles, nipples, and formula (to add calories to her bottles). Such a blessing! We then went over all the paper work and took the monitors off of our baby. When it was time to pick her up and put her in the car seat I lost it. I was holding my sweet 25 day old baby for the first time without a single wire on her, and I was about to take her home! Gosh, even writing about it makes me emotional all over again! We got pictures with our nurses and you can tell by my face how emotional I was! I was SO EXCITED to take her home, but like I said these people had become my friends! Not going to the NICU and hanging out with them would be a huge change! I cried, we all hugged, and then our nurse walked us out and just like that we got to go home.

When we got home my mom and Nixon were still at church and that was good. We got settled and shortly after they got home! Nixon really didn’t pay much attention to her. He just kind of looked at her and just went about his day. He was tired because he didn’t have a nap, plus he had a cold so I wasn’t really upset he didn’t care to be around her. We took some pictures and just settled in as a family of 4 + grandma and Chief. Easily one of the best days of our lives!