New Chapter

It's been so wonderful having Chase home and not having to make multiple daily trips to Children's Mercy!! Our new life chapter with Chase is off to a great start. We enjoy just standing over him and watching him sleep. His care is alot more work than most babies, but it's all we know and we're getting into a routine. We put him in his Pack-n-Play during the day which is in our living room. And he sleeps in his crib at night in his room just across from ours. We can see his monitors and readings from our bed. Each day we have to carry down to the living room two monitors, a heavy humidifier, and the suction machine, and then carry them back up to his room at night. But we're used to it, and hopefully he won't need the monitors too much longer. The big loud apnea monitor hasn't gone off at all yet, just the pulse oximeter goes off when his sats drop into the 80's or his heart rate jump to 200 because he's mad. We've learned only two things make him mad, losing his binkie and gas...both easy fixes :)
Chase's feedings are going pretty good. He's still not up to speed with the bottle feedings only taking about 50 mls of 85mls. So we give the rest thru his g-tube. He breastfeeds twice daily for now and that's going pretty well. We'll give him less by bottle or g-tube if we think he's gotten alot from breastfeeding. He only eats every 4 hours, so Chris and I are actually getting pretty good sleep. We take turns with the 1am and 5am feedings, and have learned to trust the monitors will wake us if anything goes wrong. We have also learned Chase's cues and trained our ears to hear when he needs to be suctioned.
Max the dog met Chase and seems to be a bit jealous, but is adjusting well. He hides behind the chair whenever we turn on the loud suction machine. Today Chris and I gave Chase his first bath at home. It went well, no major mishaps. He did "spray" us though (for the second time today), which was pretty funny! We were a little nervous unhooking him from his monitors while we bathed him, and worried we would get water in his trach. But we were quick and careful, and it went fine.
We're enjoying every moment with Chase, and we're so blessed to be one happy family under one roof!

Grammy feeding Chase


Max, meet Chase


Aunt Shari, Grandad, and Chase


Chase with his bunny


Bath time


Mom got sprayed


All clean