Home (sort of) for the Holidays!

I lost it. I cracked....

Friday the 21st I went into McMaster to visit Sophie and heard, yet again, that there were no beds available for her to be transferred to St. Catharines. The nurse asked me how I was doing and I said:

Fine...............no wait.
Not fine. (*queue the uncontrollable sobs
and ball-bearing sized tears)
You need to go get the social worker
(Karla). I need to talk to her now. I'm done. I'm done.....
I'm taking my baby and I am going home.

So, Karla comes to see me and explains that there's nothing they can do, and that it would be unethical for me to take the baby now, and that it's only a little while longer to wait for a bed and that she thinks I need to go home and rest....yadda yadda yadda. I continued to cry and beg for them to do anything ANYTHING to get my girl closer to home and out of the level three NICU she had outgrown. I even told them to ask St. Catharines if I could put her in a box in the corner of the old people's ward and I would stay and care for her myself. I hit the wall.

Then, like out of an O.Henry Christmas story, a magical thing happened. A nurse practitioner named Sandy came over to me and told me that she would do her best to make things better for me. I had never seen her before in all of our time at the NICU, but here she was and she was going to help me! She disappeared into the hubub of the NICU and left me to wipe my mascara tears off of Sophie's head. Shortly after, she reappeared, and let me know that there was a bed available in Niagara Falls and it was ours if we wanted it. YES! WE WANT! WE REALLY WANT!

I love you Sandy nurse practitioner. I have a fantasy that I call the McMaster NICU and ask for Sandy and they say, "Why, there's no Sandy that works here...." and then a bell rings and I know that Sandy got her wings....

This is the first Christmas in my life that we didn't have a tree. We didn't buy gifts for each other and we didn't bake. I have a Christmas theme every year and for a year in advance I am preparing a gift wrap and decor colour scheme. This year there was only hurried wrapping of a few simple gifts with no thought as to how they would look together under a tree. Somehow, though, we still had Christmas. Spending our afternoon with our beautiful girl and our families and being so grateful for what we have made it through...being so grateful for the people we share our lives with. I'd like to say that I found the true meaning of Christmas....but I still missed baking, shopping and wrapping gifts in my extra special way. We're having a family Christmas in January, when we can all be together.

So, long story short....our girl got her wings and came to Niagara Falls to spend the rest of her time growing in the NICU there. Our amazing holiday was spent letting various family members hold her. The most amazing thing was seeing my brother Gord hold my daughter for the first time. They're hospital pals and all we wanted was for them to be home for Christmas together.

So, we got our Sophie sunshine home for the holidays, but she still isn't home home. She is gaining weight steadily (she's 4lbs, 4oz now) and has no more tubes. She eats from a bottle and is still learning how to breastfeed. She doesn't have a lot of stamina, so I don't make her try for too long, but I've been pumping for 3 months, so I don't want to give up now. She is still having little battles with reflux, and desats to the '80s once in a while, but she is really stable and looks just like a newborn baby. Her due date was January 4, so we hope she's home by then.