10 Feb

The kids and I made it back safely---
Tommy is still doing well, but we don't think he'll come home until the middle of the week. We took an infant CPR class, and Tricia took a class on the latest and greatest info for newborn care. They are going to send him home on a low dose of oxygen, so they also gave us some training on how to hook up this portable monitor that measures his heart rate and breathing rate. The bad (or good, depending on how you look at it) thing is that it has a REALLY loud alarm on it--so if his breathing or heart rates go outside of predefined parameters, the alarm goes off--loud enough to wake up even me! I'm not sure how long he'll be on oxygen, but I don't think it should be more than a month or so.

He is still doing very well on his bottles--as long as he is feeling well. He spent half of a day hardly taking anything from the bottle after his circumcision and he is supposed to get a couple of shots today--which I'm sure will have the same effect. He has to take all of his bottles in a 24 hour period for us to be able to room in with him, but as they give him shots and the like, that will push the time back because he gets so fussy.

BUT, he did take an entire bottle for me last night, so that was pretty cool.

So, the plan will be to have Tricia come home the day before we are supposed to room in. Then, we'll take the kids out of school early the next day and head up there. My mom should be able to meet us in OKC and will take care of the kids while Tricia and I spend the night with Tommy. The cool part will be that the kids will be able to finally touch Tommy when we spend the night, and we are ALL looking forward to that day. Then, we'll (hopefully) all head for Altus the next day!

Having him on oxygen and the monitor is going to be a pain in the butt--especially for Tricia. Going shopping should be intersting to say the least (that might actually be good for the budget, though!). The monitor is portable, but it is the size of a medium-sized purse, and the oxygen bottle is about two feet long. So, trying to drag all of that around will be painful. But, at the same time, he shouldn't be going out much anyway right now--too many germs for him to catch!

We are supposed to be really careful where we take him the first few months--any kind of pollution in the air--even an Altus dust storm--can really effect his lungs at this point. They even said not to let anyone who smokes hold him as the fumes from their clothes can even mess with his lungs. So, we'll have to be pretty careful the first few months! The last thing we need is to have him go back to the hospital!

Of course, in my rush to get out of the house, I forgot the camera (again)!!! So, no new pictures right now. SORRY!