Thursday - Sleep Room

The NICU at UNC has three sleep rooms for families to use as a test round for heading home. After the shocking news of Willa's quickly approaching discharge we got set up in the sleep room. I was a single parent for a bit because Daren was playing softball with the church team. I was to expect him around 11pm.

Because we were on the road to home, the feeding schedule is adjusted from every three hours to when we saw hunger cues. I just had to make sure I fed her by the fourth hour.  I think I rushed the first feeding at 830pm and that set the tone for the evening. My first go-round of single parenting wasn't stellar. Maybe if I had cheered a bit louder each time UNC M Soccer scored a goal v. Boston College Willa might have stayed awake for the feeding.

Thursday was my first opportunity to have a hand at changing the dressing on the omphalocele. My helper was our nurse and we had an audience of the charge nurse and someone in training. I was asked if it was okay to have the extra sets of eyes b/c the trainee had never seen an om. The change went great and Willa hardly made a peep.

Meatball subs. YUM

Daren got back to the hospital around 1130pm. We enjoyed a late picnic supper of meatball subs and chatted about how crazy it was we were going to have Willa home in a few days. I lost track of time and when I looked at my watch it was 1230am. Panic, on my part, set in. I didn't want the nurses to think I couldn't keep my baby fed so I started snapping orders to Daren. Get this. Move that table. Move faster. I was not a nice person. I'm sure it isn't surprising, but we didn't have a successful feeding before going to bed.

I woke up around 230am, pumped, and went back to pod B for a bit of a "counseling" session my from night nurse. I felt like such a failure and just awful about how I treated Daren. She reassured me everything was going to be okay and it will get easier on Friday when we were scheduled for our second night in the sleep room.

We were out of the sleep room by 8am so we could head home and do some more preparations for our little Bean to come home.  We planned on being back at the hospital by the afternoon before starting our second stay on the NICU.

Our accommodations

Willa is oblivious to the chaos