Day 91: Home

For the last two weeks, the nurses have been making comments about how well Gabe has been eating and how they think he'll be out of here soon. However, all that anyone could tell me was that it's all up to him and there was no way to know when it might happen. That made it really hard to plan around... Pat was planning to come up last weekend anyway, but we weren't sure if he'd be coming up just for the weekend or if he should stick around longer.

All that anyone would tell us was that once they pulled his feeding tube, it would probably be 48 hours until discharge. Last Friday the nurses started saying that if he pulled his tube out by himself they wouldn't put it back in.

Thursday night I went to a Discharge class put on by March of Dimes. Saturday Pat and I bought a carseat, went to an infant CPR class and watched a NICU instructional video, all things we had to do to be allowed to leave. I started returning all of the things that various people had lent me while I was up there.

Sunday morning they pulled Gabe's tube. By the time we showed up they'd already done the car seat test. All that remained was the hearing test, overnight care and another eye test. Unfortunately, Sunday was the day that breastfeeding got complicated, so Pat and I were convinced that this was going to delay going home. It was rough. But apparently it wasn't nearly as bad as we'd thought, because on Monday the doctor said that we were still looking good. Gabe passed his hearing test and the doctor told us that we could stay overnight.

Monday night Pat and I stayed at the hospital. They took off all of Gabe's monitors and we did all of his cares. The nurses were around, but didn't help us unless we asked a question.

Early Tuesday morning, the eye doctor came and did another eye test. He said that things looked really good and he was very impressed given the fact that he was a 23 weeker, but he's not completely done yet. We'll need one more appt to make sure that his eyes continue to develop properly, but if we promise to bring him back in a week, we can take him home.

Pat and I went home to pack and clean up the house that we were staying at, and then we went back to the hospital and signed the discharge papers 

and left the NICU with our baby!!!

It was 3 months to the day since I was medivaced up here, making Gabe one day short of 3 months old. He was born at 23 weeks 4 days, 1lb 6oz, 11 3/4 in and was now 36 weeks 3 days, 5lbs 0oz and 17 in long. Including the 4 weeks of bedrest, it's been 17 weeks of not knowing if we were ever going to bring our baby home.

We hopped on the evening flight, which Gabe slept through, and met Bella, Grandma and Grandpa at the airport. Then we spent our first night together at home as a family of 4.