Another pumping session, another post from my phone. It’s been almost 48 hours since I was at the hospital. I left Friday night, renting a car to drive up to Salem with the intention of finishing Judah’s nursery so it would be done and ready by the time we came home (which is still TBD at this point).
Boy howdy, did I grossly overestimate my abilities, especially given that Salem is in a 90+° heat wave and our house has no central AC.
Larry was kind enough to call a friend to install our window AC units in the nursery and our bedroom (thank you John!); they weren’t installed until midday Saturday and by that time, it was 88° downstairs and 97° upstairs. It took a while for the rooms to finally cool down but thank G-d John came over because I would have gotten heat stroke otherwise. I think I’ve lost a couple of pounds in sweat alone. It was so hot I had to sleep on the couch Friday night and it only ever got down to 86 downstairs then.
Once in the nursery, I got a little overwhelmed at how much we still had to do. So I’ve spent the time organizing what I can, realizing that I will probably have a mental breakdown if I try to assemble the crib by myself (it’s from IKEA).
In fact, after having very mixed results trying to freehand paint-maker a Doctor Who quote on the walls, I straight up had a meltdown.
This weekend, which was supposed to be a relaxing jaunt away from the monotony of the NICU, to make things nice in the house… I just couldn’t do everything I wanted to accomplish. That, combined with the heat, my exhaustion, and me being away from Judah for the first time since he was born 3 weeks ago tonight: it was just all too much. I sat in the middle of the nursery floor, surrounded by opened boxes and packaging trash and piles of baby clothes – and just started sobbing.
All I wanted was something that resembled normal, prepared, and not so thrown together for once in this entire experience.
I went out to dinner and got a sample flight of beer, my first real beers since I got pregnant.
I needed it.
While coming home was way more stressful than I wanted it to be, I’m glad I’m here, however briefly. It felt wonderful to finally sleep in my own bed, to see my cats – even just to walk around my own house – for the first time in 23 days.
Sidebar: I genuinely can’t believe a) he’s that old already and b) we’ve been gone that long.
I leave here in about 3 hours or so from now, just as soon as I finish a few things here. The deep clean and sparkling, finished nursery will have to wait for another weekend when it’s not so damn hot and I have Larry to help me. As disappointed as I am that I just couldn’t get it all done, I have to accept that and move on. It’s one of the things NICU has taught me: pick your battles. Roll with uncertainty. Settle and move on when you have to.
* * *
I’m not the only one who had an escape this weekend… Our little warrior has broken free of his isolette!
His feedings have, mercifully, been going MUCH better and it looks like his gut is functioning the way it should, however slow it was to kick back up after 10 days of no feeds by mouth.
He’s up to 40ccs now, with a 5cc advance every 12 hours. In a half hour, he’ll get his first feed of breast milk since May 17, the night he developed NEC. He should be up to full feeds by tomorrow night and they’re hoping to get his PICC line out within the next day as well.
They’re going to wait until I get back to introduce any breast milk feedings by bottle. Thankfully, he’s got a freezer FULL of what I’ve been pumping and I’m driving down at least 8 bottles of fresh in a cooler tonight. I’ve preemptively cut out dairy as well, at the recommendation of the neonatologist, just to make sure he doesn’t have any kind of allergy.
Speaking of pumping, it’s time to wrap up this session and get back to work here, then back on the road.
