The Home-Coming Dance

Has it REALLY been a month since my last post????  My apologies, but OH WHAT A MONTH!!!  Here are the highlights!  We officially passed our hearing test...

Ready to rock, mom!

Tubular Bells always puts me to sleep

And spent a lot of time just waiting and growing.  We couldn't seem to get past needing the oxygen, even just a small dose.  And while we started taking some feeds by bottle, Teagan developed severe reflux, so feeding took a very long time when we could get her to take the bottle, so most of the time we had to gavage feed her through the tube in her nose.

Her due date (October 1st) came and went.  We celebrated with a book of Shel Silverstein poems (which are hilarious and entertaining for adults, too!).  We hit 5 pounds, then 6.  We passed our 100-day-mark in the NICU.  But without being able to take feeds by bottle or stay off oxygen, it didn't look like we were being sent home soon.

Waiting...

  Ian and I spent our first anniversary in the NICU.  We figured it was appropriate since we have effectively spent a third of our marriage at Evergreen.  I found an electric candelabra in the gift shop, we covered the table with swaddling cloths and ordered Italian.  It was so much fun! 

The finishing touches...

The best part was no dishes!

 My fantastic colleagues at Conover Insurance threw a baby shower complete with a diaper cake and the most amazing black forest cake I have ever seen.  The nurses at Evergreen were SO appreciative of the leftovers, though I had to think twice about not eating it all myself!!!  Thank you all so much!!!

 

 We started dressing fashionably for the season....

Scary cute!

Lil Monster

Creepy Crawler

Teagan started getting restless in her crib, so we picked up a jiggle chair for her that bounces gently with her weight and vibrates softly to put her to sleep.  She was a little nervous at first, but it quickly grew on her!

What are you doing to me NOW?!?

 Teagan wasn't the only one getting restless.  Four months of waking up early, going to work, going to the hospital, getting home late, getting up and doing it again was getting to all of us.  Our poor pug, Edward, had been riding along with me in the car all day every day faithfully and we would let him out to feed and walk him periodically.  Finally our good friend Chris took him for a few weeks to give the poor guy a break.  Thank you, Chris!

It was getting to Ian and I too.  Luckily we seemed to take turns "hitting the wall" so to speak, and could each help the other through.  Having a good sense of humor definitely came in handy!

I was BORN to take the car seat test!

Finally the doctors started telling us that if Teagan went much longer without being able to take her feeds by bottle, that they would teach us how to insert the gavage tube and send her home.  We had come to accept that she would be coming home on oxygen, but we really didn't want to do this too, if we didn't have to.

Ian decided to start his paternity leave early and stay 14 hours plus per day at the hospital until she came home, working with her to get her to feed.  She seemed to take bottles better for us than for some of the nurses.  It worked.  The following Thursday they told us she would come home THAT weekend.

Actual sign in Teagan's room

PANIC!!!  I freaked out a little at first, you never feel that you are completely ready, but as I went over things, everything was do-able.  We learned how to mix her formula with extra calories to keep her weight up and with thickener to help with her reflux.  Jan, our fantastic physical therapist, built her a soft foam wedge to sleep on to help with the reflux too.  We spent the night a couple of nights at the hospital, went home Monday morning to install the home oxygen and learn how to use it and the pulse oximeter (measures her heart rate and her blood oxygen level) and then went to the hospital to pick up Teagan and finally take her home.

We might have had to 'move out' a little...

NICU parents get so few "normal" baby experiences, that just the act of carrying her out to the car, waiting with the nurse while your husband pulls the car up to the circle drive, putting the car seat in the car for the first time...it's pretty special.  Even looking like complete idiots figuring out how the car-seat actually goes in and how the stroller actually collapses despite plenty of practice beforehand.  Yup, special.

So now we are home, and it has been a week!!!  We have re-arranged the house for the oxygen tanks and the "Formula Concoction Station".  We alternate sleeping and setting alarms.  Teagan doesn't wake up and cry for food, so we wake her up and feed her every 3-4 hours.  We have what was possibly the worst diaper rash known to man under control thanks to a home remedy from Grandma Sandy.

Our first walk outside!

Relaxing on the couch

Teagan with her faithful guard-pug

 We brought Edward home a couple days later andhe has been wonderful.  He wants to be everywhere Teagan is.  If she cries, he checks on her then comes and whimpers at one of us.  He lays right by her while she's in her jiggle chair.  He's even given her toes a quick lick if she pokes them out of her blanket.

Now we begin relationships with a whole new set of doctors.  We have visited the pediatrician, Dr. Dave twice now.  He is awesome.  We will have a nurse come to our home every week to weigh and measure her so we don't keep taking her to a doctors office where other sick kids might be.  We will meet with a pulminologist for her BPD and a physical therapist to make sure she keeps developing properly.

Tucking in for the night

We welcome well visitors that have not been ill for the past two weeks or have not recently been in contact with an ill person (just let us know you'll be visiting so we won't be napping!).  We will gladly squirt you with hand sanitizer.  :)  We should be able to take Teagan out for short visits in a couple of months, once the worst part of flu season has passed.

Thank you all for keeping up with our incredible journey, and I will keep updating this blog as new things develop!