Days at NICU - 2

As the days progressed, the little peanut started showing signs of improvement. He was latching better and had started bottlefeeds once/twice in a day. At around 2 weeks, the nurses were confident that he would go home soon.

The NICU bustled with new borns, caring nurses and new mommies! By now, we had become familiar to the environment. Bunty's immediate neighbours were twin boys on one side and a little girl on the other side. One baby would start crying and wake up all the other babies! Sometimes, the babies would pull off the nodes and set the monitors to beep.  Bunty once pulled the feeding tube out of his nose and startled us!
I had mastered the art of disconnecting all the nodes from the baby, feeding him, changing his diapers, dress, putting him to sleep and connecting back all the nodes.

At around Day 18, Bunty baby was off the tube feeds completely. He had switched to bottle/breast feeds. He had passed his first test yayy!

The next test was he had to stay in his car seat for 90 minutes after a feed without any discomfort. His stats had to be normal a;; the while. He was so tiny when we tucked him up with all the belts in the carseat...like a doll. We left him to sleep and left to home. Called back later to find out that he passed the carseat test too :)

So, the final test was for us basically. On the night of Day 19, we had to stay overnight at the hospital with the baby. We had to take care of him without any help from the nurses. We were given a family room with all amenities. Of course, now it feels it was so easy to carry off. But we were real nervous that day! We were on the spotlight and we were on our own to take care of the baby. So, it was a big thing then. S and I took turns and woke up every 3 hours to tend to the baby. Little Bunty didn't trouble us much. The nurse checked on us a couple of times to see if we were doing okay. Next morning, we got a big thumbs up from NICU to take Bunty baby home!!! We almost jumped in joy!

On Day 20, we dressed up Bunty in a cute red welcome home dress. Took pictures with the nurses. Left them a Thank you card and treats. Afterall, we couldn't have done it without them.

And so, we were on our way home :) S and the grandparents had decorated our home for the baby's welcome!

The moment was so heart warming to have our little bundle of joy enter our abode. Little Bunty was finally HOME!