Primary Children's Hospital

Here we go - the pictures I've been dreading reliving.  Fin had a lovely stay at Primary Children's.  The first few days he spent heavily sedated as his body responded to the antibiotics.  He was on the ventilator for several days, but eventually weened to different types of oxygen and nasal cannulas.  I don't remember the order.

On Wednesday my sweet neighbor offered to take the boys to free zoo day.  I felt like I kind of needed to get out of the hospital and spend some time with my boys so I went too.  We stayed for about an hour before I had to get back to pump.  Pumping every 2 hours didn't give me much time away from the hospital!

 Thursday was Thanksgiving!  We we dropped the boys off at my mom's in the morning so we could go see our sweet babe.

 We got to hold him for the first time that day!

 He failed his carseat test the first time.  Something about his sats dropping too much.  I was so tempted to just walk out the door with him!

 Finally his face was free!

 This was his primary care nurse, Nancy.  We really appreciated her pushing for Fin to try more and do more each day.  It's great to have a nurse that cares for and believes in your baby :)

 Near the end of his stay, the doctors felt that Fin was healthy enough to be moved from the NICU to the infant medical/surgical unit.  Nancy pushed for him to stay there with her until he was discharged, but they eventually decided to transfer him.

We were told that if he was transferred, the boys would finally be able to come see their brother.  Well it turned out that was not the case.  Med/Surge had the same visitation rules as the NICU.  It was lame.  I was angry.  

We took the boys to see Santa at my dad's work.  We had to fill out a card that reminded Santa what each kid wanted, what they are good at, and what they need to work on.  So Santa sat Easton down and said, "I hear you don't listen to your mom and dad."  He about broke down and cried.  It was awful.  We felt SO bad.  He was doing such a good job coping with a difficult time at home and Santa just told him he's doing a bad job!  I almost cried.  And I spent the rest of the night convincing him that he is the awesomest kid in the universe.

Then I hurried back to Fin.  We did NOT have a good experience in that unit.  Basically we went from a nurse at our baby's bedside 24/7 to a nurse out in the hall taking care of all the babies.  They only came in when they heard crying and sometimes not even then... Fin's poor roommate cried all the time.  Every time I came to visit I walked into the crying room praying it wasn't my baby who had been screaming for who knows how long and simultaneously feeling so bad for the other baby whose parents were rarely there.  Pretty much it was awful.  There were all kinds of miscommunications.  I felt like we were regressing and were never going to get out of there.  I wanted to be there all the time because I wasn't confident in the care he was receiving in that unit.  It was hard!

 On Saturday morning on December 7th, I got a phone call from the nurse telling me Fin was going to be discharged!  She basically said he was all mine as soon as I could get there!  I was so excited to have my family whole again!  

An hour later, the nurse practitioner called and said she changed her mind.  She felt that he needed to be monitored for longer after coming off the dopamine.  I could have killed her.  I wanted to scream.  I basically said, "OK" and hung up.  I called Tyson bawling so bad I couldn't even talk.  He thought something horrible had happened.  We decided to load up the boys and take them to see the lights at Temple Square and stay at the City Creek Marriott so that they could be with us to pick up Fin the next day.

When we were a block away from the hotel, Easton decided to puke all over the car!  Ahhhh!  We basically wrapped him in a blanket and carried him into the hotel naked.  We washed his clothes in a quarter washer and Tyson took the boys to the pool while I went to be with Fin.  There was a terrible snow storm that night and people were sliding all over.  I could hardly see the road and I was glad we had decided to stay close by.  We decided not to go to Temple Square due to the blizzard.  We ate at the City Creek food court headed to bed.  When we got back to the hotel we discovered there was no wifi so we spent $7 for the boys to watch Toy Story on pay per view.  Rip off!  

In the morning we got everything ready and I rushed back to Fin.  I took off all his leads and got him dressed in his own clothes.  I waited for hours to finally get the ok to take him while Tyson and the boys waited in the hall.

The boys were so excited to take their brother home! 

There.  I did it.  It's all over now. :)

Wait - just when I thought it was all over I found more pics (3 months later) that I almost missed...

When Callan and Dad came to get mom out of the hospital we had to stop and see the ducks on the way home.

Tyson took me on a date to the cafeteria at the hospital.  My face was SO swollen!!!

 The boys loved seeing Super Man and Spider Man whenever they came to the hospital!  PCMC is awesome for the families of sick kids.  They had special movie nights and all sorts of things for the boys.  Even though they couldn't go see the baby it was nice they could be there to spend some time with us.  The Ronald McDonald family room was a huge blessing!  There was a big kitchen we could go and eat dinner together, a TV, beds, couches, showers, etc... we only used the kitchen and TV but what a great resource!  Some day we hope to give back!

Dad took the boys on a date to Scheels before they came to the hospital to watch "Brave."

 Uncle JD came to visit.

 The boys each got their own baby and doctor supplies.  They loved them!  They got to draw the faces on their dolls.  Because they were wearing hospital gowns, they even made sure to draw bum cracks.  Oh geez.