Surprise… (just kidding..)

Well Teresa got a call yesterday morning from the "acting" discharge nurse who had a message. "There is an order in for Baker to be discharged Thursday or Friday of this week…"

Now before I go into what happened next, let me give you some background here. For the past 11-12 weeks we've been hoping and praying for this day, the day he will be discharged. This would be the happiest day in our life, and a start of a new chapter in our family. Praise God! We've been fully prepared that the madness won't stop here, that Baker will require a ton of follow up and may come home with some extra equipment but still he will be home.

Finally we've been assured in the past by his primary neonatologist that we would be given around two weeks notice when they assessed that he was ready for a discharge plan. I always figured it would be at least a week knowing that nothing ever goes as planned when it comes to his hospital care…

When we got the news we both went through the most horrifying mental journey. The first thought was he's NOT ready yet, the second was we're NOT ready yet and the third was the most sickening guilt I've ever felt in my life. Why wasn't I jumping up and down with joy and praise? My dear son is coming home…

Well apparently they were just kidding. The discharge nurse was not the real discharge nurse, but a fill in. She apologized what she meant to say was that we need to do the apnea monitor training soon (Thursday or Friday) because Baker will be going home soon; maybe even next week (at the earliest).

Baker doesn't quite have the bottle feeding thing quite down yet (which is expected he's only at week 35 gestationally) and he's still on O2. We knew he was progressing rapidly but didn't think he was there yet. The last few nurses he's had didn't know Baker and I can almost bet everything I own that they were under reporting status changes in his condition (heart rate drops and O2 desaturations). His primary nurse got back in today to straighten him out and to give the doctors an honest assessment of his progress.

Besides the irregularities in his care, Baker is still trucking along really good. He got a follow up EEG and they are saying that he is showing no evidence of seizure activity, so they are going to take him off of the Phenobarbital to see if he needs it or not. He had his follow up eye exam today and they found the right eye was healing nicely but they couldn't clearly asses his left eye (I hope I got that right). They are going to do a follow up exam on Tuesday.