Family

Since we couldn't get to Oregon, but still had to get Grandma Terry home, we arranged to meet Grandpa Pat in Richland so we could give her back (the other grandkids were ready to pay ransom!). We already miss her terribly, but it was nice that Tucker got to meet some of the Family.

Grandma Sibyl


Grandpa Pat--"Patrick" is my dad and my Brother's middle name, and Tucker Patrick McLain is the first boy on my side

Also, since we couldn't make the trip over, Jeremy's parents came out here so they could see the baby.


Three McLain Men

ix-Nay on the ip-Tray

Tucker went to see Dr. Hall today, he's up one ounce from his birth weight, and doing well. However, Dr. Hall put the kibosh on our little road trip to Oregon. Cold and Flu season, lots of people, and I know there is no way we could keep anyone in our families from holding and snuggling him, no matter how stern we are. So, Dr. Hall volunteered to be the bad guy and just say "no." So his blessing is postponed until his immune system is a little stronger. Sorry to all the folks who I know are anxious to see him, but you'll have to wait a little longer. But remember, anyone who is willing to do the 2 weeks with Maeli can earn themselves 1/2 an hour with Tucker.

Long Story Short

We are home! Tucker was discharged this morning, and we just got back into Pullman. Both kids are sleeping, and the house is a total mess...Grandma and I have our work cut out for us, but its SO nice to have everyone in one spot. Maeli got to see Tucker for the first time right before we left the hospital, she likes his ears. Thanks so much Kate & Crystal for saving us with the car seat situation. We're going to take some time to settle down and then we'll start visits. We are leaving for Oregon on Friday night so that we can bless Tucker on Sunday. Prepare the air beds Grandma Sibyl, we'll be there sometime Friday night. Its going to be a little crazy getting ready to go, but I think we all need to get away to vacation...even though we've been away. Plus this is the only chance Jeremy has to head to Oregon until July. No one is welcome to visit until I clean my house...any drop bys will be given chores which must be completed before I'll show you my cute baby.

Grandma's Turn

45 Meals
40 Bottles of Milk
10 Loads of Laundry
4 "Homes"
2 Weeks with Maeli
1/2 hour with Tucker....Priceless

Pictures

Tyring to catch up on missing sleep...

No more Oxygen...knock on wood. They also took out the IV in his head today!

I'm so happy because all the numbers on the monitor next to me are perfect!

Maeli and grandma playing babies at the Ronald McDonald house.

Bonding in the play room.

Update

Jeremy and I went in to see Tucker last night when Jeremy got here from Pullman. He was off of Oxygen most of the day, I got to nurse him 1 1/2 times (with the lactation lady there, so hopefully her pointers will benefit both of us). We've been topping him off with a bottle as he's now on "full feeds" every 4 hours. He still has a feeding tube in, and sometimes he just gets too tired to finish eating, so they feed him through the tube. He has to be able to eat all day and all night by himself without getting too sleepy before we can take him home. Jeremy got to give him a bottle though and then hold him for about an hour while Tucker slept in his arms, his breathing (and heart beat, as I can't help but look at the monitor every 10 seconds) were nice and even the whole time. Yeah! He no longer has to have the billy light on, so that's one more step closer to coming home.

The developmental therapist came in yesterday to evaluate him. She's actually going to re-evaluate on Monday because she didn't think it was fair to expect certain things after he had run a marathon the night before...who would be up for muscle strength testing? His palate is a little high, from being on the ventilator, which might make nursing a little harder, but shouldn't have any other effects on him. He also doesn't root really well, which again, will just make nursing a little harder...worse case scenario, we don't nurse...but we're still working on it and hoping. She might give us a "work-out" plan for him to do at home. He's also on an oral medicine for the next two weeks (we can give it to him at home, so it won't effect his stay-time) to help prevent his heart from freaking out again...even though its unlikely anyway. We have a follow-up visit with the cardiologist on the 20th.

Side note: so right now we are still planning on driving Grandma back to Oregon and blessing Tucker on the 15th, but we'll have to come back on Thursday in order to get to his appointment. All of our plans are very soft at this point, but that's where we're at. It all depends on when he gets to come home and how much more school and work Jeremy will miss.

Maeli had a really bad night last night, so Jeremy is sleeping in a little with her. Since Tucker's care is every 4 hours now there really isn't much for us to do until 12 anyway. So then we'll get the update. Not that I want any more of my babies to go through NICU boot camp, but I'm thinking feeding every 4 hours and knowing how to put himself to sleep in his own bed are decent bonuses to walk home with after all this...

Friday

We saw Tucker this morning, the plan is to continue to wean him off of oxygen completely, and to continue to try to get him to eat on his own. I've only been able to nurse him once, but we're going try again this afternoon. Tucker has his developmental evaluation this afternoon, along with a hearing test, and his echo. At one point the "discharge" word was mentioned in relation to early next week, but when the heart stuff (see the last post) I don't know how that will change. I'll try to get some more pictures posted, but Jeremy is in Pullman today, and when I see Tucker I get to hold him, I don't think about pictures...but I'll try. He's getting cuter and cuter everyday.

A set back

I didn't blog last night because I wanted to make sure we could start out by saying everything is alright. And everything IS alright...So I went in for the 5:00 care last night and I was holding Tucker and trying to give him a bottle (he's been puking lately, so they switched him to soy and that's going better...just a side note) all of the sudden his heart rate shot up to 260 (he's been around 160) and his O2 dropped into the 70's (he's been in the 90's). They put him back in bed and double checked everything to make sure that the monitor was accurate. This next part is from my point of view, and not necessarily medically accurate...All of the sudden there were 5 nurses crowded around his crib (he had gotten moved into a big-boy bed earlier in the day) he oxygen was been cranked up, they ordered a STAT chest Xray and his nurse, Wanda, told on of the other nurses to page his doctor. Meanwhile, other than the monitors going crazy, you'd never know by looking at Tucker that anything is wrong, he's just watching all other hustle and bustle. I started crying (I was working on 2 days in a row without tears, but no go at that point) and one of the nurses made me sit down and explained that his heart wasn't in any danger, they just needed to get his rate down and figure out why it had jumped up. I got kicked out during the Xray (we're used to that) and went to call Jeremy to come down to the hospital (he was trying to study for his mid-term that was re-scheduled for Friday). While he was on the way, one of the nurses brought my a cup of water and told me I had to sit down and drink and she would keep us updates, but at this point there was no news. Shortly after Jeremy got there the doctor came out to say that none of their "usual" methods were working to get Tucker back into the normal zone, and he had called a cardiologist. With grown-ups they try to get them to hold their breath, or bear-down, or cough hard, and that usually "re-sets" the heart and problem is solved. Its a little different with babies, but they weren't able to get him to cough and he wasn't really responding to the medicine, so they were going to try a different medicine, but we could go back and be with him (this is now about an hour later and his heart has been pounding the whole time). We went to see him, and he was back in the regular NICU set up, and back on oxygen, they were trying to get the pharmacy to mix up this other medicine, and now we're down to about 3 nurses and the Doctor. Just as they're about do set up this other medicine, the cardiologist gets there and says, "wait" he's looking over the EKG and about 2 seconds later says, "he needs to be cardioverted" this is when they take the paddles and zap you. The cardiologist drew us a picture of what was happening, I can't totally explain it, but basically Tucker's heart had this extra little cycle going that was making his heart go faster, and medicine wasn't going to do anything because the cycle was totally electrical. So we had to go out for about 10 minutes, they gave Tucker some "heavy drugs" so that he wouldn't feel anything and they zapped our little baby. It worked. When we got back in to see him he was back to normal on all the monitors and thanks to the medicine he was totally out for the night.

My understanding is that its kind of a rare fluke that it happened, that he happened to be already at the hospital and hooked up to the monitors, and the odds of it ever happening again are very slim. They are giving him a echo this morning, and we haven't heard yet how that went, but its not a structural problem with the heart, and it shouldn't effect him in the future.

For now though, it basically scared us to death, and set Tucker back at least a day.

I forget what day it is....

I haven't been to the hospital yet today, but yesterday Jeremy and I each got to hold him for almost an hour each. He's also taking some of his food through a bottle, and when we're there at the right time we get to hold him and feed him. He caught up to me, as my milk still hasn't come in, so he's getting formula mixed in with the good stuff. We had to take Maeli to the Urgent Care yesterday, she has a raging ear infection, Mom and Jeremy had to go on a hunt to find a pharmacy with the only medicine that works for her, but they found it, and she slept a lot better last night. I think she's feeling pretty good today. I'm off to the hospital to see our little dude. Jeremy is at work in Pullman today, but should be back up here sometime tonight.

What a weekend...

No more breathing tube! Tucker got his tube out on Saturday. Jeremy and I got to the hospital, the Doctor came in a few minutes later and said that they wanted to take the tube out within the hour. We had to step out, but when we came back in the room he was breathing like a big boy!

on Sunday I got to hold him for the first time. He only gets to get out of bed once a day for about 10 minutes, but we'll take it.


Jeremy's turn was first thing this morning. I cried and cried watching him get to hold him, 7 days in between snuggles is too long for a Daddy. I'm hoping that maybe they'll let me hold him again tonight, but we'll see.
They have Tucker on oxygen through his nose, and they're slowly trying to decrease how much help he needs keeping enough in his body. His lungs are getting better, but are still very sensitive, they might end up giving him a steroid to try and boost his efforts a little bit. Whenever his little world is shaken his breath rate goes up, so they need him to be able to stay a little more consistent. He is eating through a feeding tube, they tried to give him a bottle once, but the breathing/sucking/swallowing all at once was too much for him. He does love his binky though.

Sorry about the blogging lull, we've had a busy weekend. Our friend, Kirsten (thanks so much) hooked us up with some of her family (thanks so much) that lives outside of Spokane, we spent Saturday night with them, and were able to go to Sacrament on Sunday. It was nice to be in a home, and feeling like more of family for a while. We are grateful for the open arms and hospitality of what were total strangers at this time last week. We now are in the Ronald McDonald House, just a few blocks from the hospital. We'll be able to stay here until Tucker gets to come home. We feel good being here since its close enough for me to walk (they also have a shuttle to the hospital) when Jeremy has to go back to Pullman with the car. We've been taken care of everywhere we go, but we're glad to not be an imposition to anyone, and kind of feel like we can set up "home base" now that we know we're here until the end.