Showing Dax A Little Love

He's HOME!!!!

Woo Hoo!!! Seriously two out of three babies making a NICU appearance is MORE than enough, I mean twice now I've walked into the hospital EXTREMELY pregnant to deliver my sweet boys and twice now I've been discharged (and stayed in an empty hospital room) empty handed - it's enough to give a girl a damn complex!!

BUT that's all forgotten now, because he's home!!! We busted him out on Saturday one week after he was born and we are SO happy to have him home!!

Another Baby Another NICU Visit

So as his birth stats showed he was a bit on the tiny side, at under five pounds at birth, and the Kirk 'standard' of 17 inches, he looked fine to me at birth - although when they told me his weight I do recall saying to Dave - a FOUR pound baby, that's what crack babies weigh - we'll blame that bluntness on the drugs, but well, it was probably more likely that was just me, anyway . . . . I digress. So as is customary when you are strapped to your delivery table, Daddy and new baby head off to some obscure corner of the room where they get to work on the welcoming rituals of your birthday. Then after Dax was bundled up he was brought over for me to give a kiss ~ which they sort of brought him to me at an inconvenient time, apparently when they squeeze the life out of your uterus it causes you to feel extremely nauseous - which I can CONFIRM!! AND Garry, the anestesiologist was holding the little kidney shaped dish to the side so I could be sick - BUT I HATE the stupid kidney shaped dish - SERIOUSLY you want me to vomit into a shot glass? Cause it's not going to all fit and then what!? Where will the overage go!? So THIS is what I was stressing about while they were attempting to show me Dax. And I guess it was about this point I said "UGH, I HATE trying to throw up in these dishes!" to which Garry smartly responds, "so then don't throw up". REALLY?!?! Gotta love a sense of humor in the OR!! Then he says "if you aren't going to be sick and can turn the other way there is someone you want to meet"

Ta-Da, it's Dax!!

He was oh so cute, and very calm and alert, they let me say my hellos, and I think I gave him a kiss, I kind of can't remember everything cause it was right about that time that Gary gave me a little shot of sleepy time juice and the world got fuzzy and my everything got really warm. But I do remember saying for me to enjoy my little nap while they took Dax and Dave into the recovery room to do the bath and all.

Same Room - For About 5 Minutes!
So they finished my surgery, I switched tables to the rolling cot and they moved me over to recovery to join Dave & Dax, who was just finishing up his bath, I admit I was pretty out of it, although I was much more awake than 20 minutes earlier, but apparently just after finishing his bath instead of screaming, which would make sense, he held his breath, which freaked out the nurse. SO, it wasn't 10 seconds later when the emergency nurses were pulling back the curtains and looking at and working on Dax.
I really wasn't entirely with it, but they showed me Dax let me say HI for a minute and then they told me they were taking him to the nursery to check him out further, I was like "Alrighty, he's not my first baby taken off to the nursery, so do what you need to do."

DEJA VU

SO, as I sit in my room, my GIANT corner room with 4 windows room, I hear babies crying on the floor and families cooing over the newest addition and I think, UGH this SUCKS!! My Mom had the boys and she brought them down to see me and Dave, but after one night on that awful cushion soda bed I told Dave to head home and get some good rest. So I was on a sort of vacation, no kids, no husband, no new baby to tend to and food and medications brought to me on a regular schedule, not too shabby. Of course EVERY chance I got I was down in that nursery/NICU with Dax.

When he first went into the NICU they 'forced' oxygen into his nose to encourage him to breath deeper.

My little frog baby

This is my first picture with him on Sunday - look how tiny he was!

We tried to only share 'normal' looking pictures so friends and family didn't FREAK out at seeing wires & tubes

There were a few really good things mixed in with the not so great things; first my milk came in by Sunday night, which meant he could get off that formula and start getting the goodness from my milk - although it took them until Monday night to get it 'processed' which I don't understand but whatever, second after a slight snafu on Sunday afternoon where my Mom wheeled me down to the NICU and then went to pick up her lunch and forgot to pick me back up from the NICU I started walking everywhere, which meant I had a super fast recovery, and right in line with that, this being the 3rd c-section delivery either my nerves were completely numb still or I was loving the meds, but I did not once, NOT ONCE, have any pain in my recovery! Even when they made me get out of bed Saturday night, nothing, so that helps A LOT!!

So What's The Deal Here!?

After what we went through with Pierce, I had little to NO (closer to NO) patience with this 'we're concerned because he isn't ACTIVELY feeding for his eight feedings a day' B.S. the NICU was trying to sell me. I'm like WWWWHHHHAAAAATTTT?! You ran all the tests, there is NOTHING wrong, and definitely NOTHING like what Pierce had, and you want to continue to keep him in the NICU to the tune of $2,800+/day plus whatever else you 'add' in there just to feed him!? I KNOW how to do the NG tube, we did that with Pierce, I KNOW how to mix 'miracle grow' formula with my breastmilk, and I can CERTAINLY get myself a scale at home and monitor weight for a LOT less than what you're charging us. . . . . So come Friday, six days after his birth, I had to call in the reinforcements, my Cardiologist Dr. Khan, who we absolutely adore!!

See they said Dax did have a small, non problematic ASD and his PDA, apparently lots of babies are born with these little holes that have to be open en utero to allow the blood to skip the lungs since they don't function until after birth, so there was no concern about these holes, but we had asked Dr. Khan to be informed as our family Cardiologist, so since he was with us from the very start of Pierce's ordeal, he knows us well and so he took the time to call in on our behalf and tell them that we are competent parents, that we have been through WAY worse than a sleepy baby at feeding time and that he had absolute faith in us to do the right thing and follow any discharge instructions, follow up appointments, etc. . . I mean I was to the point of tears of frustration over this, WHAT newborn have you EVER seen that actively 'asks' 'cries' 'stirs' every three hours to eat!? NONE - in my experience and from what my girlfriends tell me they ALL had to put wet washcloths on their babies the first few weeks to wake them enough to nurse or take the bottle, so I was going in guns blazing on Saturday to finish our CPR class and tell them that I was leaving with my baby that day! Period! Paragraph! End of FREAKING Discussion!!

GIVE ME MY BABY!
I was seriously losing it, they would tell me that he wasn't ready to go home because they were still gavaging (pushing through the nose feeding tube) half of his bottles each day, I swear my eyes popped out of my head, WELL have you TRIED to FEED him those bottles FIRST then push them ONLY IF he can't finish them!?
Dr.s ANSWER: oh no, that would be too much, we only add one bottle every other day to let them build stamina.
MY ANSWER: NOPE, I call BULL SHIT! Start feeding that baby from the bottle only, leave in the NG tube if you have to but I DO NOT want ANY feed going through there until he has been given his fifteen minutes to attempt to drink it first. How will we know what he is and isn't capable of IF YOU DON"T LET HIM TRY?!?! ~ can you tell I'm getting worked up just typing this!? Seriosly getting hot under the collar, but HOW stupid was that!? At their rate he would have been in there for another week just building up to feed.

Guess what, he took EVERY drop of EVERY bottle like a friggin CHAMP!! So since that and the CPR class were the last things on the check list, other than the car seat test we were good to go! Dave took K & P and ran over to babies R Us and bought a new car seat JUST for the test! We were like SCREW it, we'll just return that sucker after we get him outta here! So. . . Dax passed his two hour car seat test, Dave and I passed our CPR & First Aid training and by 3:00 one week after his birth we were OUTTA THERE with our sweet, albeit tiny, baby boy!!

Here he is on his 'jail break day' - a girlfriend from the neighborhood had an entire box of preemie clothes, thank GOD, cause clothes that tiny are actually quite tricky to find much less WARM clothes that small!