Taking a Break

It's day 10 now with Noah in hospital and I'm really, really tired. I feel like a bit of a space cadet as you really do get in your own little world sitting in that tiny air conditioned room all day and the days, and hours just roll into one. After 4 nights sleeping up there in a row I'm feeling very sleep deprived after lots of broken sleep thanks to beeping IVs, the beeping feeding pump, nurses coming in every hour to do Noah's obs, nurses coming in to give him nebs during the night and his monitor beeping every time his heart rate or sats drops to a certain level.

At 7am I drag myself off the (not so) comfy sofa bed and past the nurses desk to jump in the shower before it starts getting too busy. The nurses always give me a cheery 'morning! How did you sleep!?' and my reply is usually 'not much' as they give me a smile. Noah's sats were dropping a lot yesterday so the physio who had seen him all week called in the head physio to come and take a look at him. She came armed with a bag that they used to give him an extra big breath every time he breathed in. They were hoping it was going to really expland his lungs and help clear his airways and bring on lots of coughing.

After two sessions of bagging and three sessions in total for the day Noah ended up having a really good night with him looking really bright and breathing easily.

He was so good this morning that they dropped down his oxygen to 2 litres, took away the cardiac monitor, and put him on a portable sats machine instead....this was this afternoon - now down to 1 litre of oxygen and saturating at 100%!!

Every night after school the boys love it when Aaron walks in after work. They all run to him yelling 'Daddy!!!' like they haven't seen him for days and give him a big hug.

Before Aaron takes the boys home for the night Jalen always goes over and give Noah a big kiss and checks out what his monitors say. He is always analysing what they say and if his levels drop too much he knows it isn't good.

It's been nice having visitors every day and today we had an extra special one...Alison just arrived back from the USA and popped in to see us.

On the days that Noah should be at school with the boys, the school has been letting Di come up to sit with Noah for a few hours to give me a break, so I can take Kobe home to have a sleep. Kobe isn't too keen on having a sleep when we get home - especially since he's been at the hospital or at Lisa's all week, and hasn't been having naps but when I wake him up to pick up the boys from school he cries as he's still tired and wants to sleep longer.

All of us are really tired, but Noah's paediatrician Dr B told me this morning that he expects that Noah will be in till around the middle of next week so we have a while to go yet, before things get back to normal. He did say he is much better, but they are concerned about the fluid that he still has and want to make sure that has all settled down before sending him home.

Last December we saw some cheap flights to Sydney and decided to book two nights away with the three boys. We decided last year, that every year we wanted to take the boys away on a special holiday without Noah so that we could just concentrate on them for a couple of days without having to worry about Noah and not being able to do certain things because of him. We booked tickets to Sydney and thought it would be fun to go up for a weekend with the three boys, to stay with Chrish, see the sites, go to the temple and also go to the football at the same time. Of course Noah always ends up getting sick when we have something big planned and the weekend we had booked to go was this weekend!

The boys have been looking forward to it all year, and we had roped Mum into looking after Noah at our house for the weekend. With him being in hospital I said to Aaron that it looked like it would just be him going with the boys, but as the week has gone on and Noah has gotten better we thought that maybe we could all still go and Mum could stay at the hospital with him for the weekend. I talked it over with the doctors and nurses and all of them agreed that Noah was a lot better and that we don't need to worry about him, and that he would be well looked after for the weekend. They all said it would be nice to go away with the boys and have a break together, so we talked it over and decided that we will still go.

So we have three very excited boys tonight, who can't wait to go to Sydney tomorrow to see Uncle Chrish and have some fun. I feel sad that we are leaving Noah, but know we couldn't do as much if he came with us and know that it's just too hard to travel with him like that now. I'm actually really glad that he is looking 'well' but still in hospital, as I know he will be well cared for by Mum and the doctors and nurses, and it will be nice for Mum to have them do all the medical care and feeds etc while she just spends time with him.

I just hope he behaves himself for them all - not like he was at 5.30 this morning - wide awake and ready to party- little monkey! We leave tomorrow at lunch time and get back Sunday at lunch time, so it's only a day and a half in Sydney, but I'm sure we will have lots of fun before we head back to hospital again.