So, on Tuesday, Barbara got up even earlier, for the 6:30/7:30 AM feedings. She figured that since we now knew we were going home soon, that we needed to be able to handle the feedings around the clock. Since I was already doing the 12:30/1:30 AM shift, she would get up earlier to try to handle the early shift. We weren’t sure what we’d do about the 3:30/4:30AM shift when we got home, but we were getting closer.
On Tuesday, we found that Spencer had taken his first full 59 ml meal that morning. And he was becoming more and more regular, eating at least 50ml for each meal. The chief neonatologist came to us and told us that despite what the other doctor had mentioned about staggering the discharges of the boys, he had reviewed the cases and was recommending that the boys be discharged together either on Wednesday or Thursday and that they had started discharge procedures. We then spent the day getting ready. For instance, both boys had to be tested in the car seat. Ordinarily they tested the babies for an hour and a half to make sure that their vitals did not drop out of the safe range. In our case, because of the distance to home, they ran the test for 3 hours, just to be safe. Both boys passed (actually, they did Dexter’s on Monday and Spencer’s on Tuesday). They did hearing tests on the boys. With our concurrence, they gave the boys Hepatitis-B vaccines. There were several videos that we had to watch before the boys were released including one on SIDS, one on Shaken Baby Syndrome, and one on caring for your baby. We were able to watch these while feeding the babies, so it wasn’t too bad, although the video on Shaken Baby Syndrome was pretty jarring—to me, it seemed the idea was the scare the daylights out of first-time parents to make sure they were too scared to ever do that to a baby. L But, all in all, we got through a lot of what needed to be done.
So, on Tuesday afternoon, we decided to take a break. We had been told about the local street fair that was this town’s annual big event. It was a five day street fair where they closed a significant portion of the main street through town and set up a HUGE fair. It is the largest street fair in the state. We were told that we should visit it since we were in town and see what it was all about. We went and had the local “specialty” sandwich and, since, we were in Pennsylvania Dutch country, we treated ourselves to a funnel cake. Yum! We wandered the fair for about an hour and then headed back to the hospital.
Barbara went to bed early so that she could get up again for the 6:30/7:30 AM feedings. When I went in for the 9:30/10:30 PM feedings, I had just gotten through changing and feeding Dexter but had not yet burped him. It was about 10:15. The nurse on duty got a phone call. It was pediatrics calling. It turns out that there were three juvenile patients in the ER who would require admission to the hospital and there were only two empty rooms. That meant that we would have to vacate the room. And of all nights, the one night that the local hotel was booked up. We weren’t sure what we were going to do, but the nurse on duty stopped me and told me that there were two open rooms in maternity and they were not expecting anyone that evening, so one room should be enough for emergencies and we could move into one of the two empty rooms. So I had to go and wake Barbara up and once again, we packed up quickly and moved back from pediatrics to maternity. Again, it astounded us that the hospital staff would bend over backwards so much to accommodate us when they were busy dealing with patients. It took about an hour to pack up, move, and settle back in in the new room. But, I was done with about an hour and a half to spare before the 12:30 AM feeding cycle began. On the plus side, both boys ate well and continued to gain weight. I seem to have gotten off a day on the weights. The weights for their last night were Dexter 6 lbs, 4.9 oz (up 7.4 oz since birth) and Spencer 6 lbs, 7.7 oz (up 7.2 oz since birth).
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