Coming Home and Settling In

As I said we are really quite amazed that we are at home with a little baby and I suspect that we have felt the same emotions that all mums and dads must feel when they come home with a newborn, but with one big difference which is that Massimo was born 82 days ago!

We “roomed in” at the hospital from Sunday at around 4pm and we were really worried that we would feel confined and bored within the four walls of the hospital but it all went really rather well. Our first night was, well….different to anything we had ever experienced before. Massimo was, and has been, as good as gold.

Massimo’s trachy tube accumulates secretions over time, and after a while his breathing becomes really quite loud, sounding rather like someone with a weasy chest when they have a cold, only louder. If left unchecked these secretions would effectively stop him breathing, so one of our most important, and frequent tasks as parents is to suction his tube. We have been leant two large vacuum pumps, one of which is portable. Every few minutes or hours depending on whether he is awake or asleep, calm or agitated, we have to insert a narrow catheter into his trachy to suck up the secretions. We have also been leant an oxygen saturation monitor by the hospital for use at home.This monitor bleeps when the oxygen levels in his blood drop, indicating that he is not breathing well. We took this to hospital with us and without this gadget I fear neither J nor I would have fallen asleep at all, nor even pretended to. That first night Massimo fed at about 11pm, this took about 45 minutes, then I went off to express but had a problem with the breast pump and didn’t get back to our room until nearly 1 am. Between then and his 3 am feed (I set the alarm), I don’t believe either of us actually slept more than a fitful doze. We woke at every slight change in the sounds he made. Between 4 and 6 am was the same, but at about 6 am Massimo woke up crying and was pretty fretful after that, at which point we gave up on sleeping at all!

Since we had collected Massimo some 18 hours previously, we went through more than 50 suction catheters. In comparison, during the following 36 hours I don’t think we used up 30! In our panic and concern we were cleaning his trachy tube every other minute! To be fair though, Massimo was overexcited and/or scared by his new environment and he seemed to be breathing quite fast quite a lot causing an unusual amount of secretions. The same thing happened when we first arrived home and again he needed lots of suctioning, so although I’m sure we were overanxious parents, at least some of it was genuine!

Our second night in the hospital was quite reassuring as both of us woke up when Max started crying and we were both concerned that we hadn’t heard quickly enough, but Massimo did not look like a distressed baby who had been crying for ages, he looked as though he had only just started.

On Tuesday morning we did another trachy change with Justin in the driver’s seat and it went off without a hitch. Unfortunately we did have a horrible moment after we took Max back into the nursery whilst J came home with a few bits – a surprising number of toys and clothes had somehow magically accumulated in the hospital along with more medical equipment – and I went of to express. We wheeled him in in his cot and he went very pale and then quite blue. He did go pink again, especially after the nurse slapped him around a bit (not badly enough to call the police but enough to remind him to breathe!).

We finally left the hospital after much paperwork collection and many goodbyes at around 4.30 pm. Of course yours truly marked the occasion with a fair number of tears, but I still couldn’t believe we were on our way home!

We arrived home to find that my brother and his girlfriend had decorated the house, some of which can be seen in the picture, and brought a congratulations card and gift for Massimo and a bottle of champagne for the adults. An occasion definitely worth toasting!

Our first evening home was fairly chaotic, but we have found ourselves slowly getting organised and settled. Massimo looks cute in his crib by our bed. The boys (Jasper and Horace) have been quite put out by the new addition to the family, Jasper especially, but things are settling on that front too and the other day he looked very content lying with his head resting on Massimo’s chair.