Having Beckett at home was an adjustment - like it is for any new parent. It was tiring, it was joyful, and it was busy. Most of our time was occupied with feeding Beckett. The NG feeds, SINC (oral feeding "training"), took a pretty long time to set up and clean up from. On top of that, I was pumping every three hours. No one ever really talks about the exclusive pumpers out there - boy, is it a lot of work. Pumping on top of bottle feeding, cleaning and sterilizing everything over and over again. 8 times a day to be exact, at the start. Anyone who stuck through exclusive pumping for any period of time deserves a big pat on the back - myself included! Feeding was our number one priority. I will write a separate post about Beckett's feeding journey because it is deserving of that, but I will just say for now that Keith and I believed strongly that Beckett was capable to eating orally, and that his recovery would be greatly improved if we were able to achieve oral feeding.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand: Beckett at home. One of the biggest challenges for me at first, was not having any monitors connected to Beckett. All the data provided by monitors, temperature checks, and calculated volumetric feeds while in the NICU started to make me obsessive. At home, I was checking Beckett's temperature 3 times a day, for no real reason other than it was done so regularly in the NICU. My midwife was a sweetheart and made herself available to answer our questions during the transition, and she convinced me to only check his temperature once a day, unless Beckett felt legitimately feverish. Good advice. Eventually I got there!
Our first week at home, Beckett had three appointments: one with the individuals we started to refer to as the feeding team (a dietician and an occupational therapist), a nurse from home nutrition who came to our house to weigh Beckett and observe an NG feed, and a follow-up at the hospital with the surgeon to start up his bum dilations again. Three appointments in one week became pretty much standard for us in the first few months. It took Keith and I a while to figure out who to contact for what subject/concern. For instance, why was the feeding team not part of the home nutrition team? Who knows. It seemed a bit disorganized and confusing. In fact, I’m writing this post in December, and I often still don’t know which specialist is the go-to for certain issues. We were juggling a strict feeding schedule (and the set up, clean up, and pumping that came with it), appointments, and family visits, and I honestly felt like I had very little time to just be “mom” and bond with Beckett. I wish that when we brought Beckett home from the NICU that we had set aside a few days every week to just be a family of three, working around the appointments that were often booked by others.
Despite the fact that I obsessively took Beckett’s temperature throughout the day, for some reason I didn’t have any trouble falling asleep at night. I thought I’d be awake, staring at his chest rising and falling, wishing he was again attached to monitors for his vitals. With his bassinet in our room, I knew that by putting Beckett to bed following all sleep safe recommendations, the only other thing I could do for him was get some rest for myself to help better take care of him. Plus, my alarm was set to go off every 3 hours so that we could feed him and I could pump, so sleeping time was a precious commodity. Beckett still wasn’t crying, so our lives were ruled by our alarms to make sure we fed him on time, especially through the night. When he first came home, Beckett would fidget and grunt a lot before falling asleep, and we were pretty convinced he was uncomfortable. It probably could have been considered “colic”, but since he didn’t cry it presented differently than it would for most babies. Once he fell asleep, Beckett was (and continues to be) a very good sleeper.
The first few weeks at home were a jumble of appointments, family visits, and Keith and I adjusting to life at home with Beckett. We were learning what were “normal baby” things, what were “normal Beckett” things, and how to manage it all. It was a lot, but it was so nice to be home with little Bee.
Fictional heroes generally do one dramatic thing, once. Real-life heroes are the ones who just keep at a hard job, day-in, day-out, there for those who need them. You guys are our heroes.
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