Home Sweet Home

April 18, 2010. After 109 long days Jacob finally got to come home. We got to take him home one week after his original due date. And guess what, my little boy slept through the entire event.

Mike and I did an 'overnight" at the hospital on Saturday before taking Jacob home. Children's encourages parents to spend at least one night at the hospital with their baby before taking them home so we can get use to operating the apnea monitor, giving our baby his medications, etc. So we got there at 9pm and the nurses basically shut the door and told us to be parents. They did come in once during the night because I wanted an official weight and length before leaving the hospital. Jacob left the hospital weighing 8 pounds 1 ounce and 49 centimeters inches long! That may sound "normal" to everyone else but Jacob started life weighing 1 lb 12 ounces and 33 centimeters long. It's incredible how quickly he was able to catch up to other newborns. I couldn't sleep the entire night. We've been so close to taking him home a few times and I just didn't want anything to happen to make us stay longer. At 11pm his monitor did go off. The way the monitor works is that it monitors his heart rate and respiratory rate. If his heart rate dips under 90 or over 225 for longer than 20 seconds the monitor goes off, if he's respiratory rate dips under 80 for longer than 20 seconds the monitor goes off. We are supposed to then of course run to him and watch him for 10 more seconds (or ten beeps) and if he doesn't correct it himself (getting his heart rate back up or breathing) then we intervene. So at 11pm the monitor went off and I almost died, the monitor hadn't gone off all week and the night before I am suppose to take him home the monitor goes off? But luckily it only beeped once and he self corrected it. At 11:45 pm the monitor went off, this time for 3 beeps and he corrected himself. I spent the rest of the night staring at him and the monitor praying that it wouldn't go off again. Morning came and no more alarms. My parents came to the hospital to help bring Jacob home. You accumulate a lot of stuff over 3 and 1/2 months. Even though I had been taking stuff home all week, we still had to take two trips to the car. Again I was probably the crazy lady in the ICC, I was recording and snapping pictures of everything. Meanwhile Jacob was fast asleep. He somehow managed to stay asleep all the way home even though we hit about a hundred potholes.

That day we had an endless stream of visitors. We limited our visitors to just family, I didn't want to overwhelm Jacob, or myself. Jacob was a perfect little angel, and slept most of the day even while uncles and aunts were passing him back and forth.

Our last visitor didn't leave until 11pm. We then put Jacob into his crib, I think he has to get used to sleeping in it because he was pretty fussy and didn't want to stay in bed, which is unlike him, he's usually such a mellow kid and will hang out in his crib (in the hospital) without much fuss. I spent most of the night staring at his chest to make sure he was breathing and watching the lights on his apnea monitor.

I'm so happy he's home and I am ready for the next chapter in our adventure. Stay tuned.