Audrey spent the night so she could stay with the kids again this morning while Michael and I went to the hospital. We spent a couple hours in the morning there together with Finnian. It was pretty uneventful. We did each get to hold him, which is quite an undertaking with everything he’s hooked up to. Finn still mostly sleeps. He was given 2 doses of pain meds overnight, but none today. They are only giving him pain meds as needed; they look for signs that he’s in pain, like obvious distress, increased respiration and increased heartrate. Everything remained stable today. Although he’s been breathing on his own since shortly after surgery, his oxygen saturation level is a little low, so he has a nasal canula that delivers a little bit of oxygen to him, and they will gradually lessen the amount until he’s completely weaned from it. The attending physician came in and checked him out and said he was doing well and recovering as expected.
My milk came in today and I am trying to pump every 2 hours or so, but it’s hard to keep up with that with everything going on. I won’t give up though.
Michael went home a little after noon so Audrey could get back to her life, and she headed to the hospital just to see the baby for the first time. He was sleeping, as usual. She cried when she saw him and whispered to me, "I see it." Meaning the Down Syndrome. I secretly felt like screaming.
I left the hospital around 2:30 to go pick up Joey from summer camp. Michael and I wanted to spend the afternoon with the other kids and try to put a tiny bit of normalcy back into their routine. We all had dinner together and got the kids bathed and put to bed, and then Alycia came over so that Michael and I could go back to the hospital for a couple of hours.
Our first dinner arrived via my friend, Sheryl. She brought enough pasta and homemade spaghetti sauce to feed us for a week, as well as fruit and cookies.
At the hospital, I got to do "kangaroo care" for the first time - skin to skin. The nurse stripped Finn down to his diaper and I took my shirt off and held him close to me. It felt so good.
Alycia again refused to take any money for babysitting. It is so hard to accept everyone’s kindness and not feel guilty.
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