Man, I feel like a mama!

Terran is still at 1 ml feeds but that’s ok. He’s taking them well when kept upright and burped/held for at least 45 minutes afterwards. I’ll hold that boy all day if it means he gets breastmilk. An occupational therapist came to see us and made Terran a “wedge” to sleep on. It’s a way to keep him elevated and help things move south to minimize spit ups. He seems to like it!

We started our home care training today with the Seattle Children’s company. They don’t come to your house, but more facilitate us caring for Terran at home by sending his TPN, supplies, and pulling labs. Another big part is the training. Once we complete a series of teachings, get certified by the team, and personally sign off on our abilities, we get to go home!!! Today, we spent 2.5 hours learning all about TPN equipment, delivery, storage, and how to change the line. After the nurse demonstrated, Walker and I each gave it a go. There’s roughly 3,780 steps involved, each one with the threat of infecting the line. It’s intense. Luckily, each of our parents gave us the “calm-and-focused-under-pressure” genes so we did ok on the first try. We have multiple TPN and central line trainings already scheduled and we can ask for more as needed. The LIFT team is comfortable discharging us earliest next Tuesday (!!) but it’s ultimately up to us – if we aren’t satisfied with our home care knowledge and need more time, we can stay as long as we need. I’m confident we’ll have the TPN maintenance down by then, but we haven’t gone through the central line training yet… we’ll learn general care plus how to change the dressing/covering. It’s a once-a-week completely sterile procedure that scares the bejeebies outta me. I’ll be extra super duper diligent because I refuse to be the cause of infection. Let it be by kids being kids! But not by negligence.

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The training is cool and all, like a final test to pass before we go home, but today I was 100x more excited to start… Terran latching!! Hallelujah! The LIFT team finally answered my pleas and allowed Terran to latch to a pumped breast for bonding and practice. He’s not expected to get much milk, but I don’t care. It’s not about that! It’s been so heartbreaking refusing him his instinctual rooting. Now we can both build the bond we’ve been denied for nearly 5 weeks. I know it’s not for his nutrition, but it was still oh so satisfying. Man, I feel like a mama!

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