We have dates!

It was a great birthday present today to hear that we can room in and take Sydney home. I did something I never thought I would do--I postponed her coming home. We don't want to leave Ethan there alone without his favorite sister. It would be so sad for us to leave him. We've taken a lot of comfort in the fact that they have eachother at night for company. I asked if we could 'room in' Friday and take her home Saturday and was told that would work! We are so excited that they will only need to be apart for 1 night. Ethan is scheduled to end his countdown on Sunday. Hooray!

Sydney will be coming home on a minimal amount of oxygen. We will be trained by Praxair tomorrow afternoon when they bring the equipment that we will have in our home. It is standard that the home health company come to our house and exchange the tanks about every week. It is also standard that they don't test her to come off of it for 1 month! I was told that we can take her to our doctor and see if he is okay to test her to come off a little earlier. (That is definitely the plan!) With the oxygen, we legally have to have a monitor. We've been told it's louder than a smoke detector when it goes off and that it goes off an average of 4-5 times per week. Mostly those are false alarms--her leads may come off her skin. We've dreaded this...so I didn't mind leaving her at the hospital until Saturday with hopes that she may surprise us and come off. We'll see if we get lucky. If not, I'll make a public apology here to our upstairs neighbors for the times they will get woken up in the middle of the night (and their 2 small kids). Sorry Mandy and Adam.

Doug and I went to dinner for my birthday and then swung by the hospital on the way home to say goodnight. They woke up for their feeding while we were there and I opted to give them a bottle. Doug fed Ethan and the nurse fed Sydney. It is astonishing to me how much guilt I have felt through this process. It feels wrong to have someone else feeding my babies. It took me a few minutes to make that decision tonight but I knew I was low on sleep. I've had a headache all day today and had some blurry vision this morning that was a little wake up call for me to take better care of myself. Ethan will get his new cast tomorrow morning at 7:30 am and we want to be there. So, it will already be a short night's sleep. So tough for me still.

We love their nurse tonight. Christina took care of them last Saturday night when Ethan had his brady--so we could tell she was a little anxious about having that happen again. She's had her own baby in that same NICU in the past 5 months, so it's so nice that she's 'been there'. She is extra sensitive and it's so refreshing.

Ethan seems to be doing better with his post-feeding trauma. We're getting better at putting him to bed and comforting him in his bed and he's fallen asleep a lot faster. He is pretty high-maintenance compared to his sister...isn't that backward?

Here's a few videos from our late night visit.