Home!

We are home!

We have actually been home for about 26 hours, but I wanted to enjoy my home (and especially my bed) a bit before jumping on the computer.

We also had the little issue of our Christmas tree still being up.  Luckily we had taken down all the other decorations before we landed back in the hospital, but the tree with all its trimmings was there to greet us on January 12th.  It's down now too.

Elliott is sleeping peacefully in daddy's arms right now.  We're all headed to bed soon.  I wanted to do a quick update first.

The last time I updated was on Sunday.  This is a little rundown of what happened during this week:

Monday the 9th

Elliott had a PICC line placed.  He had already had 2 IVs and the antibiotics are really harsh on veins, so the doctors didn't want to have to keep starting IVs on him.  A PICC line is like an IV, but it lasts longer.  It was not fun to watch them putting it in.  They gave Elliott a little sedative to keep him still, but it was still hard to watch him being held down and poked.  It also took a long time- more than an hour.

Tuesday the 10th

Elliott had the Voiding Cysto-Urethrogram (VCUG) test.  They gave him a catheter, filled his bladder with contrast dye, pulled the catheter out and then poured warm water on him to get him to pee.  As he peed they took a bunch of x-rays.  We were with him the whole time.  He did great.  They had him strapped down on a thing that can only be described as a rotisserie spit rod so they could flip him back and forth to see both ureters.  He didn't like being strapped down and didn't like being flipped, but luckily it was all very fast.  He had no urinary reflux.  Since the renal ultrasound was negative and this test was negative it means his UTI was just random.  There was no specific cause.  I find that to be scarier and more unsettling than there being a specific cause.  We also found out that UTI's in newborns are not actually rare.  They are the most common type of infection in a newborn.  Whoever told us they were rare was totally wrong.

Elliott was also weighed on this day.  He had gained 6 ounces in 5 days.  I hadn't pumped or given him any expressed breast milk in those 5 days so that was all breastfeeding.  Once he got a few doses of that antibiotic in him, really got over the jaundice and perked up from the anesthesia that kid went to town. 

Wednesday the 11th

Elliott had a repeat EEG.  The neurologist said that there was way less seizure activity, but he still saw some, especially when they flashed the strobe light. He did not believe that Elliott had a seizure disorder or that it will be long lasting.  He thinks that there is still some residual irritation of the brain caused by the sepsis. He also mentioned that he hardly ever does a repeat EEG after only one week and that if we had waited longer he is sure there would have been no seizure activity. The plan is to leave Elliott on the phenobarbital for 6 weeks and then do another EEG. The dose will stay the same for the whole 6 weeks. Usually the dose is gradually increased for it to remain effective, so by keeping it the same we will be weaning Elliott from it as he grows. He also mentioned that if he had seen this EEG knowing nothing about the patient he would be tempted to call it normal. That made us feel better.   I hate that we have to leave him on medication, but the neurologist is convinced that Elliott stopped breathing those 6 times because of the seizures, so we obviously don't want that.

Thursday the 12th

Elliott needed to get 3 more doses of antibiotics.  They reduced the time in between each one (six instead of eight hours) so he got the last one at 6 pm.  As soon as it was done going in (like 1 second later) they came in to remove the PICC line.  The worst part of that was them pulling the tape off.  He WAILED. 

I almost couldn't breathe during the last seconds of the antibiotic dripping in.  I was just so convinced that something was doing to go wrong and he wouldn't be discharged.

Once they removed the PICC line he had to be observed (for bleeding) for one hour.  There was none. Then we just left.  It was pretty anticlimactic.  Which is good.

We got home around 8 pm.  We were all in bed by 11 pm.  I have never minded nursing my babies during the middle of the night (although I did mind Spencer screaming all night long until he was 4 months old) so I was just so appreciative to be in my own bedroom whenever Elliott woke up.

Now that we're home, thankful to once again have a healthy baby, we are going to try to get back to some sort of routine.  Michael is finally going to go back to work after taking a whole month off.  I am going to try to figure out how to be the mother of two.  Ginger is going to live in continued fear that we will all up and disappear at any moment.  The poor dog has lost me twice in the past 5 weeks and doesn't seem to trust me any more.

The day we left for the Emergency Room I had been loading pictures to do my last "catch-up blog".  I still plan on doing it, then one more post about the hospital stay and then finally, finally, finally we can move on with cuteness and good stories.

We gave Elliott a real bath today.  We felt like we needed to wash away all the hospitalness.  This is him after.  He's 4 weeks old.  He won't be one month until the 16th (isn't that weird how the weeks and months don't align?) and he's not even due until the 18th (isn't that even weirder?) so there will be some fun posts about those days.