Adventures of our Tall Babies: The rest of Hunter's hospital stay

The weekend that Corben and my mom came to visit with Steve was the weekend that Hunter left the CTICU. As I said before, he was working on his drug withdraws and was almost impossible to get to sleep. I think we finally got a swing in his room at around 1am on Sunday morning and I finally got him settled. I went to sleep and the nurse woke me up at 3:30 saying that it was time to move him to the floor. UGH! I know they gave us the extra day in ICU so that I could get everyone from the airport, etc but goodness gracious.... 3:30am????

Leaving ICU

His new room

He also was taken off of his nasal cannula right after the trip. Such a big boy! His last remaining IV had blown that morning and I requested the IV team come to place another. He is notoriously a hard stick and I couldn't handle a bunch of pokes... especially on 2.5 hours of sleep. Thankfully the attending Dr was in the room when the IV team showed up and decided to change Hunter's morphine from IV to oral so they no longer needed a line. He didn't have to get another!

On the floor is so much different than ICU. The nurses are no longer in the room with him, the nurse to patient ratio is 1:2 or 3. Especially when you have a baby weaning from drugs and needs constant attention, you really cannot leave the room. It was at that point I really became DONE with being in the hospital. Thankfully he wasn't there for very long.

Getting to hold my boy as much as I want!

We spent just 3 days on the floor before being discharged from the hospital. His lungs were a little "wet" and they were making sure that his daily x-rays were improving. (X-ray comes super early in the morning by the way...but somehow the tech could sense that I was just absolutely exhausted, or maybe that I ran into him at all hours of the day in the hospital, so he always came to our room last, which was about 7/7:30).

His poor face skin was peeling from all of the tape that he had on it

How we got through the next 4 months! In a swing!

Getting to wear clothes again!

By Tuesday when I took my family back to airport I was DONE. I came back in tears and I think the nurse didn't know what to do with me. The attending doctor came in the afternoon and asked if I wanted to take Hunter for a walk and have dinner with him for an hour. I truly hope she knows how much that hour meant to me. For weeks I had to leave my son to eat. I would rush through a meal to get back to him (no food is allowed in the ICU). To be able to put my son in his stroller and walk into the elevator, order a meal, and sit outside with him made all of the difference to my spirit. We were pretty confident Hunter would be discharged the very next day, but when I had lived the two months that I had, that one hour of taking him from the hospital room and allowing him to again be MINE meant the world to me.

As you can see, our dinner together absolutely thrilled him

Our last evening in the hospital. I gave him a bath and was about to tuck him in

Wednesday morning, August 29, after 14 days in the hospital....just 13 days after open heart surgery, 13 days after almost losing him, I got to sign my son back over to me and leave the hospital. We were just walking a block to the Ronald McDonald House, where we had to stay a week waiting for his post op clinic, but still. He was out of the hospital. He was "fixed". He was mine.

ICU nurse Amy came to visit while we were on the floor

Dr. Amirnovin (aka Rambod) Came to say bye as well. He was shocked that Hunter was leaving the hospital so soon, considering what bad shape he was in less than two weeks prior. He was the doctor standing over Hunter when he coded and immediately started CPR. This man is amazing. He pretty much stayed in Hunter's room that entire night after.