Home at Last!

Well we're officially home, thank heavens! I'm so glad the whole ordeal is over and that we were able to take our precious son home happy and healthy. That was not the experience we were expecting to have, but are so glad that everything turned out ok.
I'll start where I left off last time, Taegen was on respiratory machine to send air into his lungs at a more forceful speed than he could breathe in. This air helped open up his lungs the rest of the way. He was on this until wednesday. Once he was able to breathe enough on his own to keep his lungs open, we were able to hold him any time we wanted. This was such a relief. Not being able to hold him was pretty rough. Luckily that was only for a short period of time. I was also able to start breastfeeding once he was off the respirator. This has proved to be a little more difficult than I thought it was going to be. But we're stickin with it and I know he'll catch on. Since I was now able to breastfeed, anytime he woke up they called us (if we weren't already there) to have us come down to feed him. and since the NICU checks the infants every 3 hours night and day, my sleep is offically gone :)
Thursday morning during one of the feedings, our nurse came in with a pair of the bilirubin lights and said he now had to be on the machine until his levels went down. Well this was really shocking to us because we thought we had opted out of that test. We wanted as little poking and proding done to our little guy as possible. We researched our options and had decided to opt out of this test. They talked to us about it, and told them we would talk about it and let them know if we decided to change our minds. Well, we never gave them permission to do the testing and the next morning they came back and said his levels were a little high. Needless to say we were not happy that they disregarded our feelings and did the test without our consent. Anyways, so all day thursday we had to lay on this bed with the blue lights shining with a wrap around his head and eyes so the lights wouldn't do permanant damage to his eyes. It broke my heart to see him with the bandage around his head. Feedings were the only time we were allowed to take him off and only for about 30 mins at a time. When we were done, I always made Jon or the nurse put the wrap back on his head, I just didn't have the heart to do it myself. Friday morning the doc came in and said his levels were low enough that he could be taken off the lights....YEAH! It was so nice to be able to hold my baby again for how ever long I wanted. (I think he was held the majority of the day by either me or Jon :) )
Now the only thing keeping them from releasing Taegen was his urine output. They had him on an iv to make sure he wouldn't get dehydrated. He had to be weaned from the iv onto just breastmilk and he had to have enough wet diapers to prove that he was getting enough food. By thursday night his output was at 1.9 (the required level is between 2 and 3) so we were hoping that they would just let us leave. I mean .1 didn't seem like a big enough deal to keep us there. At rounds with the docs friday morning they told us to get a few more breastfeedings and wet diapers then we would be released. We were so excited to hear this. Our deadline was 5:00. At 2:00 they checked his output and it was down to 1.6 we were so discouraged. We thought for sure they'd make us stay another night. We did everything we could to get the little guy to eat a whole bunch then hopefully he'd have a good diaper that would raise his numbers. That didn't work. When we went to change his diaper a while later...NOTHING! We were getting so frustrated. The nurse came in and told us she'd talk to the doc and to not get discouraged. She came back a while later and said the doc said we could be released anyway! FINALLY 3 days of being in the NICU is not fun. I don't think I've washed my hands that many times in my whole life.
We are now home (well at my inlaws since they're out of town, so we don't have to drive home and be super far away just in case we need some help) and it's going great. He's doing really good and it's so nice to be able to hold him without all the wires.
We're loving being parents. Jon is completely amazing! He's so good and patient with Taegen (although when it comes to him catching onto breastfeeding I'm a little more patient, which is funny cuz I'm normally the impatient one) He's been so helpful and involved. He's actually done almost all of the diaper changes, and my choice! I think I've only changed two so far. How lucky am I?! He came with me to all the middle of the night feedings even though all he could really do was sit there. He's always wanting to be right there with him. It's so cute. I love the boys in my life!!!

Taegen with all the tubes and wires :(

Jon and Taegen doing skin to skin

My boys taking a nap together, so cute!!