WE'RE HOME!!!!

We are finally home! I can not tell you how excited I am to be home. It was a very long two weeks in the hospital. We would have been home a day earlier but they needed to run one more test, and the results did not get back by the end of the day so we had to stay an extra night. I was non too pleased. It has been a bit trying to continue his feeding regimen at home. Not as bad as I thought, but still a lot of work. The first night we were home he did awesome, taking in all his calories from me. But it's been down hill from there. He did come down with the tummy bug the night before we left. and knowing how it has effected all of us, it is possible his lack of appetite is from feeling yucky. I know I felt yucky on and off for a week. He still does not want the bottle, making it take longer for his feeding. I need to give him a try with the bottle at each feeding. But he of course refuses and then I need to set up his tube feeding. Then when that is cleaned up I have to pump as I need to keep my supply up for when he finally realizes he's hungry and needs to be eating a lot more than he has been. It does seem like we will never reach that point. But non the less we persist. I have a few pics to share of the hospital stay. I have a before photo of him when he first got the feeding tube. Then an after pic of him at home, two weeks later of tube feedings. I am not sure if you can tell a difference, it is more noticeable in person. But he is getting just a hint of some cheeks :-) Notice his hand mitts in the before picture. He had to wear them until he stopped pulling on the tube. He managed to pull off the mitts (we didn't' put the tape on them) one night and pulled out the tube.

There were a ton of things that happened at the hospital, too numerous to count. One funny though...The doctors had come in to assess him and asked if he could roll over from his tummy to his back. As they were saying that they were putting him on his tummy. So there on the bed lies Jedidiah with his big heavy head on the bed. I told them that he wasn't even capable of lifting his head off the floor, let alone roll over. The VERY second I said that Jedidiah raised his head high (as if he's been doing it for months) and rolls right over!!! We were all laughing. It was totally unbelievable. The same thing happened when the speech therapist asked if he was making any consonant sounds. I told her no, he just coos. This time it took him till the end of the session and he was babbling on and on with the "b" and "m' sounds! I figured, hey maybe if I say he can't walk, he'll just up and start walking. No such luck though. So here is the before and after photos. I couldn't put them next to each other. The one with him in the lighter outfit is the before, and in the darker outfit, after.

Jedidiah in the cage, er I mean the hospital crib (it looks like a big blue cage though).

A better view of the cage, oops I meant to say crib :-)

Ok, I look dorky, but this is Jedidiah purposely hitting my hand with his foot, IV and and all. It was a little game he decided to play. He started doing all sorts of new things while we were in the hospital.

Here is Moira's doll all doctored up with some stuff I brought home from the hospital. They have been watching me do Jedidiah's tube feedings and were setting up the doll for tube feedings as well (you can see the syringe and tube that leads to the baby doll bottle). Plus the baby has a few splints on as well. They had to put a splint on Jedidiah so that he wouldn't pull out his IV that he had in his hand. They had us on contact isolation at one point. They had brought these extra splints in and couldn't' take them out of the room, since we were in isolation, so now my girls are playing with them.