Still in Hospital

I knew it would happen – one day in hospital always ends up being a lot more - on average about 5-7 days. One of the worst things about being in hospital is the lack of sleep. The sofa bed that I sleep on is only just wide enough that if I lay on my back I’m sure my muffin top is hanging over the edge! If the bed wasn’t bad enough, then being woken up every half an hour by a beeping IV or nurse coming in to take Noah’s obs kept me pretty much awake on and off all night. I'm feeling tired but not overly tired - I think I'm kind of going on adrenalin at the moment.

Last night I decided to try to get some sleep at about 11pm. At 11.30 pm the nurse comes in to take Noah’s obs and tell me he is due for his ventolin puffer which I get up to give.

12.30 am – nurse comes in to adjust his IV machine

1.30 am – I.V starts beeping and the nurse comes in to adjust it

2.30 am – nurse comes in to do Noah’s obs

3.00 am – I get up to suction Noah

3.30 am – nurse comes in to give Noah’s IV antibiotics and tells me he is due for his ventolin puffer again.

4.00 am – antibiotics have gone through and nurse sets up IV to flush it through

4.30 am – nurse comes in to do Noah’s obs and adjust IV machine

5.30 am – nurse comes in to do Noah’s obs

6.45 am – I think it’s 5.45 am and thought I could sleep for another hour and then realise it’s time to get up and get ready so I can meet Aaron downstairs with the boys so I could take them to school.

It’s feels like one of those nights just after you take a newborn home, and you are up and down all night and don’t really know what went on and it's all a bit of a blur.

After dropping Aaron at work and Jalen at school I went back up to the hospital with Harri and Kobe for a little while, before Mum came up to help out. All morning Harri was begging me to take them to the playroom, but I told him we had to wait to see Noah’s Dr so we could see if Noah could go home yet. They were very patient waiting in the room with Noah for an hour and a half – Kobe was kept occupied with the Wiggles on our portable DVD player and Harri played his Nintendo. Finally Dr B. came in and Harri yells ‘Dr. B is here!! We can go to the playroom now!!’.

After chatting with Noah’s Dr we knew he wasn’t keen for us to go home as Noah still needed a little bit of oxygen to keep his sats up. He said he could have his canula taken out and could switch from IV antibiotics to oral antibiotics which is one stop closer to getting home. I did ask if we may be able to go home with oxygen and Dr B gave me a little smile and just said ‘I think we have come to the conclusion that if Noah needs oxygen he needs to be in hospital’.

During the afternoon a physio therapist came up and did some postural drainage on him to try to loosen things up a bit more. He is coughing up lots and it finally seems to be getting looser. The most frustrating thing is that we are stuck in here, Noah actually seems almost back to his 'normal' self - he actually looks really good and seems to be breathing okay (he always has an irregular breathing pattern anyway).

The boys were excited to see Mum when she arrived this morning, and we did a swap for a couple of hours – I took Harri and Kobe home while she sat with Noah for a while. We then swapped over at lunch time so Kobe could go home for a sleep. It's nice having her here to help out and know that Aaron can go back to work without having to worry about the boys.

Tonight was Alison's usual In Home Support time so we were glad to have her come up to the hospital for a few hours (even bearing gifts of food and DVDs to watch!) so we could go home and spend some time with the boys after school. We even got to go out for tea!

Aaron was keen to get up to hospital tonight to see Noah as he hadn't seen him all day. He always finds it really hard to go to work when he knows he is in hospital as he stresses more about him when he is away from him. He was very happy to see him wide awake, alert and looking really well.

It's nice having Mum at home with the boys as we got to spend some quiet time up here alone with Noah tonight. Fingers crossed that tonight might be our last night and we can get off the oxygen and home tomorrow.