Home Sweet Home

I finally got to come home today. That was one long nine day stay!! However, leaving my baby behind is one of the hardest things I have had to do. This is the third baby I have had to leave behind in the NICU and it does not get any easier the third time around. I cried all the way home because it is hard to leave part of your family behind. To try and lighten things up I will tell you what happened at home in my absence...Unfortunately for Jill this week was Spring Break for all the kids which meant there was no school. Let's just say idle minds are the devil's workshop. Josh and Daniel wanted to play an April Fool's joke on Aunt Jill. They waited until she got in the shower and decided to rig up a joke. When she got out Josh and Daniel called her upstairs to show her their surprise. On her door they had hung a ransom note saying something like, "You need to clean this room or else you will go to your room. April Fools! now you need to let us do whatever we want." If he didn't get his demands he had a fake bomb set up. Oh the imaginations of a 7 and 4 year old! He even made a list of all things they wanted to do starting with swimming, going to Texas, not needing to clean up anymore, etc. He then made a fake bomb saying if Jill didn't comply she would be in trouble. To emphasize his point he made a trail of Kleenexes up the stairs over to the wall where he colored on the wall showing what would happen if the bomb went off. The only bad thing was he used permanent RED marker on my wall and floor right by the front door--AWESOME. Scrub and scrub as hard as she could Jill still can't get the marker off the wall. I guess we will have to repaint that area...I am still laughing about it even though Jill is super embarrassed. In my absence she did an amazing job keeping the kids entertained during the whole week. Since I was in the hospital during Josh's birthday yesterday we decided to celebrate his birthday today. Aaron picked up a cake. Aaron put the candles on it and Josh blew them out as soon as they got into range. I asked him if he made a wish and told me he hadn't yet, he just wanted to blow the candles out. Afterward he got to open his presents.

As for Noah, he's had a setback. He had a pneumothorax (free air in his chest cavity) or tear in his lung so they had to put in a chest tube to get all the free air out so his lung could fully expand. Unfortunately, his chest tube clogged last night and they had to replace it which is a big event. That meant he needed more breathing support from his ventilator so he will be on it for a while as well has having the chest tube in place. It is frustrating to see him totally off any oxygen a few days ago to being on a ventilator with a chest tube right now. I know it will all get better soon, but it is hard to see him struggle so much. Aaron and I got to attend rounds this morning for him. Rounds is where the dietitician, charge nurse, bedside nurse, case worker, social worker, neonatologist and pharmacist all get together and discuss the baby's plan of care. It made me miss my days as an RN, but at least I could understand what was going on which helped a lot. Anyway in the mean time keep Noah in your prayers and I will turn my attention to my other kids because Noah is in good hands and my other kids seem to always need some kind of supervision as you can tell from the story above...:)