We're home!

In case you haven't heard, they kicked us out of Primary's a few days earlier than expected, and we actually came home on Saturday! I walked into the Infant Unit  on Friday morning and the nurse practitioner told me that Cooper looked great and she wanted to discharge us the next day. We were actually planning to move Saturday morning, so we had the busiest 24 hours moving, doing all of our discharge teaching, and getting ready for Cooper to come home!

Saturday was amazing. After finishing moving, we got to the hospital where we met with people from home health who set us up with a monitor and oxygen and a pump for Cooper's NG feeds. Cooper was supposed to eat at 3:00 so the nurse made his bottle, handed it to us, and walked us out to our car. Taylor and I were laughing that they wouldn't even let us feed him... I think another baby was waiting to move into his room so they got us out pretty quickly.

Walking out of the hospital with Cooper felt surreal. I kept waiting for someone to tell me that it was a joke, and Cooper actually couldn't go home with us. I kept thinking "wait, we really get to take him home?" He's not going to stay here forever?" Driving away from the hospital was the best feeling!

The first night with Cooper was a bit crazy. The monitor that they had sent us with that tells us his oxygen level and heart rate stopped working around midnight. We called the home health company, and after doing some trouble shooting they told us they would bring a new one in about an hour and a half. That hour and a half was terrifying for me... I was nervous Cooper was going to stop breathing and I wouldn't know without the monitor! Around 1:30 AM they showed up with a new monitor and all was well. We didn't get much sleep that night. :)

The transition to home has been very smooth, and I'm grateful that we've been able to be at the hospital every day with Cooper so that we've been prepared to take care of him at home. We've kept our same NICU schedule... every three hours we change his diaper (except at home you don't have to weigh the diaper :), you can just put the wipe in it and throw it away), eat, and go back to sleep. Cooper is on a blood pressure medication that we give to him twice a day, as well as a vitamin that we mix in one of his bottles.

They sent us home with some oxygen (even though Cooper has been breathing on his own for the last few weeks) because when they did his car seat trial (he had to sit in his car seat for 90 minutes) he dropped his oxygen levels a bit and didn't pass. (However, if you hooked up most babies to a monitor many of them would drop a little too, you just don't know it because they're not on a monitor.) Anyways, since being home Cooper has been fine and hasn't need any oxygen!

On Monday we had our first appointment with our pediatrician, and Cooper is doing very well! He had gained three ounces since leaving the hospital on Saturday, his blood pressure was better than they expected, and overall our pediatrician said he looked awesome. It was so comforting to hear that Cooper is thriving at home. We will go back to the pediatrician weekly for them to weigh him and check his blood pressure, and then we have another appointment with him in a month. I have to share a funny story from our appointment... when we first got to the pediatric office the receptionist was looking up our information and was so confused. "Why does it say that this is a newborn appointment if he was born in July?" :) Then later when we were setting up his appointment for next month she said "I don't know what to call this appointment. A 4 month check up?" Haha #preemieprobs. She was super sweet, it just made me laugh!

Yesterday (Wednesday) we had an appointment at Primary's with the pediatric ophthalmologist and it went well! Cooper's eyes have both almost fully vascularized, and we don't have to go back for 8 weeks. The eye doctor said that he thinks we should be in the clear with his eyes now. We're so grateful! It was kind of the best thing ever to walk into Primary's and walk right back out with Cooper when we were done. :)

All in all, things are going well at home! We're still working with Cooper to have him take more milk through nursing/bottles and less through his NG tube. It's a slow process, but he's getting better at it. He's also still working hard to stool, and gets really uncomfortable when he needs to poop. As soon as he stools he immediately feels better. :) His colon is still growing to match the rest of his body, but he is having plenty of poopy diapers, which we're happy about!

We love having Cooper home, and now that he's here I don't know how we ever lived without him. He is the sweetest boy and we love snuggling him all day (and all night). :) We're so grateful for the support throughout this journey from so many people! I will still try to update the blog with Cooper's progress at least once or twice a week, for anyone that may be interested in how he's doing. Again, thank you all for your support. The burden of 96 days in the NICU was made incredibly lighter by amazing friends and family, and most of all by miracles and comfort from the Lord.