Life after losing my baby : homeward bound

Wednesday, March 23rd, we all went home together for the first time since December 24th! It was a pretty huge debate if we should leave or not because for one, it seemed like Sol caught all the sicknesses that we were carrying. May had a cold two weeks ago and then last week it seemed to get worse, I actually ended up taking her into the ER on saturday because her cough was sounding so bad and I was worried it might be pneumonia. They said it was an upper respiratory virus but nothing we would need to do for it. Then on Sunday Sol spiked a very low grade fever and the next day he had a bit thicker secretions. They said to just keep an eye on it though and they didnt think it was anything as of yet. Monday I started with a fever and kept it for two days! So everything was really looking rough to leave on wednesday, on top of it all, we were expected to get a really bad snow storm starting on wednesday... sooo we debated and debated, but since Sol was doing fine and we have more things to help us if he did get a little sicker, I pushed for us to go. If we would have waited then we wouldnt have gone home until next week because the roads looked pretty bad yesterday from all the snow and they don't like to discharge on friday in case something comes up and you need to get a hold of doctors or need help with equipment, stuff like that. Anyway, we headed home. As we left his room, some of the staff stood lined up before the exit doors and blew bubbles as we walked out! It was so sweet and awesome of them to do that for us!

Our drive was almost just as bad as our drive we had with Lua, only in different ways. First we changed vehicles that we were going to take him home in and the vehicle we took, the car seat sits a little differently in and was more upright than we were expecting, so he was sitting really uncomfortably and breathing pretty hard. About half way I asked to pull over so we could take him out and re position, he was pretty upset at this point anyway and i was running out of ideas of what i could do to sooth him. Then I told Thiago I wanted to switch and have him sit in the back because im traumatized from doing this with Lua. So when we went to switch, i thought it would be a good idea to take the child lock off of the door that may wasnt sitting next to, so thiago could get out when he was in the back. What I actually did though, was flipped the latch up, what i thought was a child lock but was not. So we started driving and then realized that the door wasnt shut! I had to pull over on the freeway and we could not figure out how to get the door to shut. Thiago bent his key trying to get that latch to come back down :( I finally surrendered and called my dad in hopes he would have some idea of what we could do. He did of course. He knew exactly what happened and it was a simple fix... so embarrassing, we just needed to pull the door handle up and then the latch would free up. Oh well, we figured it out and got back on the road. After that, and fixing the car seat, Sol had no more issues and our drive had no more issues!
It was a little overwhelming when we got home, and trying to settle in. We have so much stuff to unpack from being in madison for 3 months. Then that night, it seemed weird i couldnt hear the vent going, I was worried he wasnt getting the support he should be getting on the vent, I went to check on it and when disconnected the vent, for like 20 mins, it never alarmed that it was disconnected! That's bad! For kids who need support from a vent 24/7 and if it never alarms could be really dangerous! Thankfully Sol would be fine, but it seemed like something wasnt connected correctly for it to be doing that. So I had to wake Thiago up to look at it. We decided to go with the other vent and see if that would work better. That one did alarm, but then it wouldnt STOP alarming, it went off every few mins for awhile then eventually every hour for the rest of the night. I think we all got like 3 hours of sleep that night! Except for Sol, who slept through all of this! He is pretty serious about his bed time, he doesnt let us get in the way of his scheduled bed time. Even right now, we did a bath, trach cares, trach change, dressed him and fed him and he went out at 6pm and is showing no interest in waking up any time soon.

Thankfully my mom was with us our first night and helped me out the next day, which helped me to get things put away and get a little more settled. Today it was just me and the two kiddies and it went pretty well. If Sol didnt have a trach and gtube, he would be like the easiest baby in the world. Having the vent, though, is a biiiig help... he goes on his naps, i can put him on the vent and if he wakes up and I am in the middle of something and he needs suctioned, he will be fine until I am able to get to him, he hardly ever needs suctioned on the vent though. May has been a huge help all day as well, I just become a little more of a crappy parent by letting her watch more tv than I would like : / but I figure it is spring break so she can enjoy today, we will figure it out another day. And because the last few months have been so insane and hard on all of us, I told may that today was princess day, which means we both dressed up in dresses like princesses. I dont know why, but it makes her happy if im dressing up too.. so we did that all day. I really wish I would have picked a day that a ton of people werent coming over! But she was happy about it and that was the point.

It is good to be home, we are still working on nursing, we are getting places but we will see what will happen. Sol has been perfect for us.. I think he is getting over his little bug as well because today he was pretty smiley and happy. Mallo follows him around like no ones business though! If Sol is in his bassinet, Mallo has to jump up and look to see him in there. The dog will not let him go out of his sight. I'm not sure if it is a jealousy issue or if he is already having some protective feelings over him, i dont know, but Sol could not be any more impressed about Mallo at all! Oh a cute little friendship in the works!

His 3 month picture, at home!!