So, we're now three days in to (relatively) normal family life, and it's been a real baptism of fire. We haven't really left the house much since arriving home on Monday; and why should we - for the first time since September, we have no reason to go anywhere. Everything we need is under this roof.
We've experienced some worries; perhaps now more akin to the kind of worries any new parent would have. There are no nurses or doctors providing 24 hour support, so we have to just use our instinct a lot of the time. I suppose this is where we have the advantage over normal parents; we have known our babies for nearly five months after all, and will therefore know if they're acting differently in any way.
We also still have the heart rate/oxygen saturation monitors, so we're not away from all the beeps of NICU just yet - not until both of them are completely free of additional oxygen. This makes manoeuvring around quite difficult. Willow needs to be attached to oxygen all the time, so when it's time for bed we have to detach her from the downstairs supply quite quickly and run upstairs to plug her in there. We have a portable bottle to carry around if we do venture outside, and we did have our first outing today. We walked around the block to try out the buggy, trying not to keep our eyes attached to the monitors but looking at the babies instead.
One thing we have learnt, is that having two babies to look after is a full time job for two people. There's not a lot of time for sleeping, eating or anything else. But who cares about any of that. It's so amazing having them at home; being able to know exactly what they're doing all the time. They're doing really well too - generally going four or five hours between feeds, and doing a lot of sleeping. We just need to get them - and us - sleeping at the same time. Not sure how easy that's going to be though.
Willow's diarrheoa has now disappeared; her stools are well and truly solid. Maybe she just wanted to come home. We've had some lovely moments as a family; just sitting in the lounge, listening to music and smiling at each other. Just normal things that we've dreamed of doing for so long.
Today we're making a trip back to Poole, but this time as out-patients. Stanley needs to have some more immunisations so we'll be popping back into NICU for a while. We might even do something normal afterwards, like go for a walk around the park. How about that.
We've experienced some worries; perhaps now more akin to the kind of worries any new parent would have. There are no nurses or doctors providing 24 hour support, so we have to just use our instinct a lot of the time. I suppose this is where we have the advantage over normal parents; we have known our babies for nearly five months after all, and will therefore know if they're acting differently in any way.
We also still have the heart rate/oxygen saturation monitors, so we're not away from all the beeps of NICU just yet - not until both of them are completely free of additional oxygen. This makes manoeuvring around quite difficult. Willow needs to be attached to oxygen all the time, so when it's time for bed we have to detach her from the downstairs supply quite quickly and run upstairs to plug her in there. We have a portable bottle to carry around if we do venture outside, and we did have our first outing today. We walked around the block to try out the buggy, trying not to keep our eyes attached to the monitors but looking at the babies instead.
One thing we have learnt, is that having two babies to look after is a full time job for two people. There's not a lot of time for sleeping, eating or anything else. But who cares about any of that. It's so amazing having them at home; being able to know exactly what they're doing all the time. They're doing really well too - generally going four or five hours between feeds, and doing a lot of sleeping. We just need to get them - and us - sleeping at the same time. Not sure how easy that's going to be though.
Willow's diarrheoa has now disappeared; her stools are well and truly solid. Maybe she just wanted to come home. We've had some lovely moments as a family; just sitting in the lounge, listening to music and smiling at each other. Just normal things that we've dreamed of doing for so long.
Today we're making a trip back to Poole, but this time as out-patients. Stanley needs to have some more immunisations so we'll be popping back into NICU for a while. We might even do something normal afterwards, like go for a walk around the park. How about that.
Lovely blog. Thank you for keeping us up to date. There are thousands of us who really appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteHad to smile though - told you quite a few months ago that 'solid stools' would become a major topic of conversation for you - bet you never thought in your wildest dreams that baby poo could be so exciting!
Love to you all
Helen & Jordie xxxx