Living la vida loco!

I forgot how crazy it is to have a new baby in the house. Let me go back over the last 6 days and catch you up.

Tuesday March 17th we were scheduled to room in at the hospital (that means we have to stay overnight in a room with the baby to prove we can handle the equipment). We arrived at the hospital around 12:45 pm so we could meet with the medical supply company who would be supplying Ryan's oxygen equipment at 1 pm. Of course they didn't get to the hospital until all most 2 pm. We moved Ryan into the rooming in room which is in the NICU but is set up like a hotel room. A cheap hotel room with a hid-a-bed.

The equipment guy set up an oxygen compressor (that's a unit that takes room air and compress the oxygen before delivering it to the patient) and showed us how to use portable oxygen tanks for going out. They also set us up with a pulse ox monitor. That is the little light probe they put on your finger if your an adult (your foot if your a baby) that measure the amount of oxygen in your blood. The company rep then rushed out the door before making sure all was well, which it wasn't.

The pulse ox monitor keep alarming that Ryan didn't have enough oxygen. We had him turned up to 200 cc of oxygen and we still couldn't raise his pulse ox. Keep in mind when he was hooked to the oxygen in the NICU he was only on 75 cc's and that was just 10 minutes before. So we hooked up the portable oxygen tank to see where he was at and on 100 cc of oxygen (the tank only does 50 or 100 not 75) he pulse ox was back where it should be. So we called the equipment guy and told him things weren't working.

He came back to the NICU and checked the compressor and decided it wasn't working so he replaced it and quickly left again before making sure the rest of the equipment was working. So we hooked him back to the compressor and still we had problems. We changed the probe on his foot to the pulse ox monitor and that helped some but he was still needing way too much oxygen. So we called the guy back again. This time our nurse read him the riot act and told him to check all the equipment and not leave until it was all working. This time he replaced the flow meter (the part that adjusts how much oxygen Ryan is getting) and finally that seemed to fix the problem.

Finally we could settle in for the night to see how well we could take care of our baby. Little did we know our equipment issues weren't over. As we tried to fall asleep the monitor keep alarming, sometimes he was too high sometimes too low. We also had his oxygen at 100 cc's which was more then he had been on. I was afraid if we turned him up more the nurses would decide he wasn't ready to go home. Doug and I spent the whole night pressing the pause on the alarm which made it not go off for 3 minutes. One of us had to stay awake at all times to press the alarm pause. We decided to take 3 hour shifts where one of us slept and one hit the button. Although you really can't sleep when the alarm is going off anyway. It sounds like an air horn in the middle of the night.

The next morning we talked to the nurse and told her what was going on and she said the feared words maybe Ryan wasn't ready to go home. She offered to take Ryan back in the NICU and hook him up to their equipment so see if it was our equipment or him that was the problem. Meanwhile we could get some much needed sleep. I agreed and passed out.

When I woke up several hours later I went in to see how Ryan was doing. He was sound asleep on 75 cc's of oxygen with a stable pulse ox. The nurse said looks like it is your equipment. So we brought our pulse ox monitor in and hook it up on one of his feet and the NICU's monitor to the other to see if it was right. Ours fluctuated more then theirs did, but they were pretty close. Next step was to check our oxygen. We brought the compressor in and hooked it up in place of the pure oxygen in the NICU. We found that the compressed air isn't the same as pure oxygen. Sounds like common sense doesn't it, why didn't we think of that? Instead of 75 cc's of pure oxygen he needed 125cc's of compressed oxygen, another problem solved.

The last issue was that stupid alarm on the pluse ox monitor. The doctor had ordered it to alarm at 98 and above and 90 and below. When he was in the NICU the alarms were set at 100 and 84 and he hardly ever alarmed. At 90-98 he set off the alarm all the time. So we made the doctor listen to our really annoying alarm and see how often it went off and she agreed to change the alarms to 86-100.

We discussed the oxygen issues with the doctor and where Ryan was at. The doctor felt if we were up to it it was still better to send Ryan home as he was getting old enough to need the 24/7 attention of his parents. She told us to go back and get some more sleep and they would get the oxygen people out to change the settings on the pluse ox monitor.

We did sleep a little longer and then started getting ready to go home. My parents were bringing the little boys back home the same day Ryan was coming home so we didn't want to stay all day in the NICU. We went over all the discharge info with the nurse, packed up and left. We got out of the NICU around 3:30 pm and headed home to start our lives again. My parents and the little boys were waiting for us at home. Tyler kept hugging us both and repeating "I missed you".

So now we are justing in a holding pattern. Ryan can't leave the house except to go to the doctor. So we can't all go anywhere. If Andrew didn't have to leave the house to go to school the peditrician would have told us all to avoid public contact. Hopefully Andrew won't bring any illness home. Of course we would still have to leave the house to go to the store so we can't avoid people all together.

Getting home didn't stop our equipment probelms either. They have had to send us more probes for the pluse ox monitor. Apparently they aren't meant to be worn 24/7 by a wiggly baby. They only last about 2 days before they completely die. We also had to get another flow meter. The hosptial added a water bottle to the compressor to humidify the water. It was the wrong one and it caused the flow meter to become filled with water and stop working. Thankfully we have the oxygen tanks as back up. Ryan will see the lung doctor sometime in the next month so hopefully we will have a better idea of when we can get rid of this equipment.

So that's our crazy life. Ryan is home and now we are staying up all night listening to the monitor beep when he moves too much or when he cries. Then staying up all day taking care of the other boys. Doug took 2 weeks off to help me out but as the first week ends I am wishing he had another 2 weeks off. The good news it Ryan will grow fast and we should be past this soon.