Going Home

Before we were allowed to take Justice home, they did what was called, “The car seat test.” I’d been watching other babies go through it and all seemed to be passing so I wasn’t worried much about it. I mean this was nothing compared to what we had just been through. All they had to do was hook up a few monitors to Justice and have her sit in her car seat for about an hour. Easy enough, right? Wrong. Of course, Justice failed the car seat test. She couldn’t breathe in the car seat so they called off the test early.

Lucky for us, they had what they called the car bed. This was a tiny rectangular bowl looking thing with incredibly strong thick Velcro to hold the baby in while it lay down. This would have worked out very well if it weren’t for two things. First, you pretty much had to stand in the bed and pull with all your might, back pressed up against the top of the car, to get the seat belt tight around it. This was tricky enough but when you add in the apnea monitor, feeding pump, diaper bag, medical supplies, newborn baby and 2 ½ year old son, it was a little much to do every time you got in the car. Second, Justice threw up all the time. I mean, all the time, she averaged around 20 times a day. In the car bed, she could be laid somewhat on her side but more than likely, she would wiggle back onto her back. Factor in gravity and this became a very dangerous situation for her. There were times when I couldn’t pull over very fast and I thought for sure I would lose her. It didn’t take long for me to take the car bed back to the hospital and demand we figure out a way to make her be able to breathe in a regular car seat.

You don’t realize until you leave the NICU how much you’ve begun to depend on the monitors and staff. While you’re there, you start to feel some what confident in your abilities and forget that you aren’t actually doing it on your own. I was no longer thinking about the child going home with the trach. If that was my child, I would have acted as confident as her parents as long as we could have gone home. It’s like a toddler confidently walking as they hold onto their mother’s finger. They begin to have no worries; they just go where they want. However, as soon as you walk out the hospital door and put your baby in the car, it's clear, you’re on your own. You realize no one is holding your hand.

All my confidents vanished. I started thinking to myself. "She was not ready to go home. What was I thinking? What were her doctors thinking? Why did they send her with ME? Didn’t they know I was bluffing this whole time? I’m not really capable of taking care of her. Oh my God, she’s going to die and it’s going to be my fault! And she pooped! She pooped and I have to change her and it’s 100 degrees out. I’m going to have to take her into that gas station to change her. I’m going to have to tell the doctors I didn’t even get her home because she pooped and I took her into a filthy dirty gas station! Oh, why couldn’t she have just held it until we got home?"

Happily, she did survive the car ride home and so did I. Come to find out, changing a diaper is changing a diaper whether it's your healthy child, you're in the NICU with nurses to watch your every move or in a gas station on the side of the road. So the story will continue.......