Homeward Bound!

Hi again. Sorry for the delay in posting this. It’s been a whirl-wind few days.

Saturday, May 18th, one month and one day after Kate came into our lives, she finally got to leave the hospital! It’s amazing how much difference we’ve seen in the short period since the surgery. So much more energy and Kate doesn’t get tired nearly as quickly while eating. Pre-surgery we were drinking 5-10 ml of breast milk from a bottle by mouth with a lot more going down her feeding tube. Now she’s drinking 50-70+ regularly by mouth.

The transition has been…well…challenging to say the least. Audrey and I got a very unique introduction to parenthood. In the month we spent in the hospital, we got very good at the basics like soothing and changing diapers. Audrey and I handled the vast majority of the daily non-medical stuff while we were at the hospital. We’re pretty good at reading Kate and guessing what might be the issue.

Right now we are working on the overnight stuff and continuing to feed. The overnights are probably the biggest change, for me at least. Even though everyone warns you, I wasn’t ready for the reality of being up an additional 4 hours a night, tag-teaming the feeding and diapers. I think Audrey and I are a good team and I couldn’t imagine this process without her as the awesome partner she is.

Sorry for the lack of photos in the shared album. Home life has been full of activities like cleaning a house that wasn’t looked at for a month and most importantly, taking care of our new family member.

On our discharge day, we had the opportunity to do a free photo shoot. The photographer made a very cute video for us that you should go take a look at. The photo shoot was very touching as it was just minutes after she got all her lines and sensors removed after having them starting 30 minutes after birth.

A huge thanks goes out to all the staff at Children’s Hospital. We are extremely lucky to have such an amazing organization so close to our house. The doctors and nurses who we got to know so closely did an amazing job trying to look after Kate’s medical issues while really trying to respect and help us as parents.

Thanks again for all the support and help from all our friends and family. We really appreciate it. The comments and notes really helped the process and from the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

This isn’t the end of our saga…just the end of Chapter 1. We have a follow up this week with the Cardiologist to check in and talk about next steps. There will likely be more surgeries in the future but that’s not today. We’re going to take things as they come and enjoy our newly expanded family!

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