Well, Noemie has been sleeping loads since we got home. Probably because she never managed consistent sleep for long at the hospital as the nurses seem to like waking babies up. Blood pressure checks, various meds, taking her temperature (under her arm) and on and on. They even did this throughout the night. I realise they needed to keep an eye on her but really, every 4 hours?!? Worst was when they did it right before shift change and then the next nurse had to do their own observations. It was endless. Surely they realised she was recovering from major surgery and needed her rest?
After she proved she could drink from her bottle a few times, they finally agreed to remove her nasal feeding tube. Had they not agreed, chances are I would've pulled it out. Or at least asked them to try sticking a tube down their throats and see how it then felt to drink something. Her stitches also came out (the ones where they closed up 2 vent holes in her chest, the main one has dissolving stitches) along with the IV needle in her hand. It was really nice to see her without all that crap on her, especially the tape they put on her face to hold her feeding tube in place. She still has a few sticky bits from various things stuck on her but we figure that will come off in time. A nurse tried using some plaster remover and she howled so they soon stopped.
I stayed with her last night and she was pretty good. The nurse turned on the sats/heartrate monitor in the middle of the night and left it on, so each time Noemie moved in her sleep the thing would beep as it would stop reading properly and tell us that Noemie had no pulse and no sats. It was endless and it turned me off from wanting one of those machines at home as it would drive me nuts. I think Kirk paid the nurses to do that last night as I had mentioned wanting a machine at home so I could not worry at night. He thought I was insane.
Today the Drs came to do their rounds at around 11am and asked how much milk Noemie was having in a 24 hour period (745mls - they work with a 150ml/1kg of body weight so she should be having around 645mls so she is clearly making up for lost time), how she was having it (well, no tube so how did they think she was having it?) and then asked us if we wanted to go home today. Of course we said yes, so they agreed she was ready but that they needed to do a final echo to make sure things hadn't changed since the last one a few days ago. We waited about 4-1/2 hours for the echo as they had an emergency in PICU to deal with first. We just sat around the room and Noemie napped a bit and smiled a lot and ate often.
Finally it was time to come home. Echo showed nothing bad (we were looking to see if her pulmonary veins were clogging, a risk of her condition albeit a minor one). I had loads of expressed milk in the freezer (2.5 liters of it) so we got a large bag for the little containers and off we went. Good job I had made space in our freezer when I was home the other day. I've already got one drawer FULL so just for fun I added it all up today and Noemie is going to be fine for a while... 7 liters!!! Not too shabby for someone who had planned on formula feeding huh? We are going to start mixing some formula into her feeds beginning this week though just so that I have the option to stop expressing. At this point I plan to keep going for a while, at least until she is recovered from the surgery which they say is around 3-4 weeks. She'll be 12 weeks old on Wednesday anyway so we're nearly halfway to the recommended 6 month mark. I could probably manage until then.
It's so nice to have her home. I am a bit nervous she will stop breathing or something but then I would be scared of that even if she had not had any problems. As always Kirk is totally chilled out. We are going to get her a cot to go in our room so she can sleep there for a few more months. She did sleep in her moses basket today but it's a tad too small for her already (she is one looooooong baby) and she also likes to sleep like a starfish with her arms and legs spread out. Her cotbed is too big to fit through her doorway and we don't want to take it apart so it's easiest to buy a new cot. I just want to buy new stuff for her!
We are truly lucky that Noemie came through all of this so well. Kirk has another week before he goes back to work so we are going to enjoy our time together as a family and hope to get settled into a nice little routine!