A Trip to Grandma and Grandpa's House

Thursday night was a little rough. My dad held Henry in the evening, until about 10:30PM. Jeff took the first sleeping shift. I ended up screaming for Jeff at some point because a huge scorpion came crawling out of the entertainment center in the living room. Took a while for Jeff to find it. When Jeff arrived, I wasn't very articulate about where it was. In my shock at seeing a small lobster-like creature in my living room, I had forgotten the word "speakers," which is where the scorpion had crawled. Jeff had to do some moving of equipment but managed to track it down and killed it with a flashlight. I felt badly that I had to disturb Jeff's sleep time. I tried to hang on until 2AM before getting Jeff up again. By that time, I realized that my cognitive capacities were becoming somewhat impaired. Mind you, I don't need much sleep. Didn't sleep much in graduate school. Can go for two months on 3.5 hours sleep per night. My body was (and still is) really exhausted. I hadn't slept in 25 hours, was completely exhausted, and ended up falling in the kitchen (my legs buckled from under me). I went to sleep around 2:30 or 3AM. I think that I got about four hours of much needed sleep. We took Henry for a walk in the morning. He sacked out for most of it.

I took care of Henry in the morning, while Jeff worked. Got a call from nurse Michael. He'd left a message at Dr. Bianchi's office on Wednesday, asking if the doctor wanted to extend Henry's home nursing care, otherwise Friday would be his last day visiting Henry. He had to get the extension approved through Schaller Anderson. Well, the doctor's office never returned his call, so he assumed that Friday would be the last home nurse visit. I called the doctor's office and left a message saying that this was a timely matter and that no one had returned the home nurse's call. Argh. Does one have to handle every single aspect of medical care one's self?

Nurse Michael came around 11AM. Henry's pulse-ox was fine...mid 90s. His weight had increased to 6 lbs 10.5 ozs. Michael noticed that we bought a baby scale. He did a comparison and got the same results on our scale.

Dr. Bianchi called to say that he received a letter from the state about Henry's thyroid test that was done when he was born. It showed that he had low thyroid levels. He asked me what they'd done about it in the NICU, because it wasn't on the NICU papers he'd received. "Nothing to my knowledge," I answered. So, we have to take Henry into a lab to get some blood work done again. Great. One more thing to worry about. I talked to Dr. Bianchi about the home nursing. He's going to extend it a month and then re-evaluate. The nurse will come once a week, instead of twice a week though.

In the afternoon, we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Patti, who comes twice a month to do some cleaning, was coming over in the afternoon, and I didn't want Henry to be around the harsh chemical smells from the cleaners. It's one of the things that they suggested you avoid if your child has BPD (chronic lung disease). Jeff dropped Henry and I off.

Yesterday was my mom's birthday. She got to celebrate it by holding Henry in the afternoon. My parents have three dogs (Schroeder, Indiana, and Ramses). Schroeder and Indiana were incredibly interested in the baby. They got concerned every time that Henry cried, which meant that they were more or less chronically concerned throughout the afternoon. Indiana seemed particularly taken with Henry. We've nicked named Indiana "Nana." I slept for a couple hours. Jeff brought our dogs over (they love going to the grandparents' house) in the evening. My sister and brother-in-law came over. That was nice. It was a last minute get-together, so we didn't have cake. That will have to wait until next time. Henry did very well all in all. At one point, he became agitated. There were too many voices talking at once, and he isn't used to that yet. Grandma took him to the back and settled him down. Then, I took him to his room (my old room is now Henry's room) and nursed him for a little while. Around 10:30PM, I handed Henry off to my mom and went back to Henry's room to take a nap. We left around 12:30AM. Jeff and I managed to get Henry and the dogs into the car without too much problem.

Because I had slept, it was Jeff's turn to sleep. We put the apnea monitor on Henry before Jeff went to bed. I did get a little bit of sleep with Henry laying on my chest. Got Jeff up around 7:15AM. Henry helped us take the dogs for a walk. We weighed Henry at 6 lbs 11 ozs after the walk. That was good, considering that he didn't eat much yesterday (in comparison to the previous three days).

And now, the cycle begins again.

My mom has just arrived. So I'm going to go take a shower and take a nap while I can.