Lucy's home!

The past four days couldn't have gone any better. An excited wife rang me at work on Tuesday to let me know that Lucy was being taken off all monitoring and, that barring any mishaps, she'd be coming home on Thursday. And that's exactly what ended up happening!

So Robyn went in on the train at lunchtime to attend to discharge formalities and do a short baby-CPR session. Then when Oscar woke up from his daytime kip it was the boys' turn to make their final trip up the freeway to King Eddie with Lucy as an inpatient. After checking Os into creche, I headed up to Special Care Nursey 1 for the final time (I'm just as confident that we're done at two progeny as I have been watching Black Caviar perform track gallops in Group 1 races this past 18 months).

Firstly we said goodbye to today's nurse, Karen, who's been one of 30 or 40 primary care givers for Lucy since the 24th of January. Karen was nice enough to snap our leaving pic:

Then it was downstairs to the creche to pick up Lucy's big brother. Now, the wee man loves creche like nothing else (they've got good trains there, go figure) but when he saw his little sister he ran over as fast as lightning to say hello through the gate to someone he'd previously only seen in photos and on a CCTV screen:

And then he couldn't wait to show Lucy the yar yar:

And now Os is in bed, I'm writing this on the couch, and the 2 ladies in my life are lounging rather contently next to me. Life rarely gets any better.

I'll pop back on here is a few days time to tie all of this up with some final thoughts and proper acknowledgement of the many people who have helped us through the past 114 days. But for now I'm off to enjoy having our daughter where she (finally) truly belongs. Home.

A little birdy at the hospital told me that something exciting might happen this Thursday or Friday. Hope that birdy's info is on the money...

Righto, so far so good once again this week. We thought we might be running into a little bit of bother earlier in the week when first the 2 bubs opposite and next to Lucy contracted colds and had to go back into their respective humidicribs. We tried to get Lucy moved as soon as we found out the second bub had caught it, but infection control policy states that that can't happen, just in case Lucy had already picked it up. So there were a few days there where we were just crossing our fingers and hoping. (Had she picked up the cold, it would've weakened her significantly and added 2 or 3 weeks on to our discharge calendar.)

Fortunately, not only did she come out of that minor scare unscathed, she's continued to thrive on the full feeds that were introduced last week. Then on Saturday night the decision was made to give Lucy a go off oxygen altogether! So now we can finally see our little bub with no leads/wires/tubes going in/out her face/torso/arms. And besides a few desat episodes overnight (totally normal given the circumstances) she's coped marvellously well.

So now the discharge plan is quite clear - Lucy has to show that she can go 48 hours without desat-ing, and then the sats monitor can come off her foot. 48 hours more with no problems and she's out the door! So absolute best case scenario is this coming Thursday, but more likely in the 3 or 4 days following. Given that we're only just past our original due date (10th of May) we've gone pretty well all things considered.

Daddy-cuddle time!

Goodbye nasogastric tube! Yesterday it was decided that, given Lucy's fondness for feeding, she can have all her meals now on via the conventional tract. So now it's just a matter of getting her off oxygen, which she's been a little too dependent on this for our liking over the past week. Robyn's favourite consultant comes back on tomorrow, and she seems to have a knack for getting results with Lucy, so here's hoping the prongs come out and we're on the way home sometime this coming fortnight.

Well, if we were in any doubt that Lucy was not going to be a fan of feeding, we needn't worry anymore! She's a right little guts, smashing as much breast milk as she can in record time at each three-hourly opportunity. One time last week the nurse asked me if I had spilt any of the bottle, as clearly someone so small couldn't have finished the whole lot in just 5 minutes. Once she's latched on to the bottle (with expressed breast milk in it) or the boob (straight from the source) she gulps it down as if she's trying to create a new personal best. Then she lays back basking in that post-milk-feed-drunkeness until she's sound asleep. Good girl!

She's also now ready for baths. She wriggled around a bit at first but is now quite content laying back and letting Mummy do all the work, as you can see below.

Progression towards discharge seems to be continuing smoothly. The oxygen being delivered through the nasal prongs is being weened at an appropriate rate, and she's up to about one 'sucky' feed for every one tube feed. Once she's strong enough to allow abolition of the tube feeds, she'll be ready to come home and meet everybody.

1. Lucy's new room-with-a-view
2. Just chillin'
3. "I'm sick of these bloody photos, just leave me alone!!"