Maddox is a month old tomorrow....

and we'll be celebrating at HOME!

Yesterday the dr.'s told us we might go home one Wednesday. So we made all the necessary preparations, prayed, crossed our fingers and toes, and spent another night at the hospital. This morning we woke bright and early and waited for the team to do rounds and give us the final verdict. Even after they said yes, we'll send you home.....Luke and I weren't ready to believe it until we were unhooked and out the door. And they really did send us home.

We've been home for a couple of hours now. It's been pretty quiet. Luke went to work for the afternoon, Bailee is with her cousins and will be coming home with Grandma any minute now.

Maddox is still on an NJ feeding tube (it's in his intestine, not his stomache). So a home health nurse came and set me up with a pump for feedings. I feel pretty comfortable with the feeding and the oxygen. Shortly after the nurse left however, I noticed some air in the feeding tube. Not a good thing. So I checked out the pump and there is milk everywhere! Of course while I'm discovering this Maddox wakes up, cries, and I have a hard time getting him to settle down. I finally just shut off the pump and rocked Maddox until he went back to sleep. I had to replace the bag that holds the milk and we got that going again.

The oxygen should be delivered soon and hopefully they'll set us up with a concentrater, a really long hose, and something small and portable.

Tomorrow we start the first of many dr. visits. We'll go to our family dr. and make sure Maddox is up to date on his immunizations and all that good stuff. In two weeks we'll see the cardiologist and also have another swallow study done. The one Monday went pretty well. Maddox didn't fail it, but he also didn't pass with flying colors like we'd hoped. They went ahead and moved his feeding tube to NG (in the stomache) and told us to plan on staying longer so they could wean him to a bottle. When I got back to the hospital Tuesday morning they had decided Maddox was breathing too quickly and they put the tube back to NJ. At first I was a little bugged because I don't think they gave him enough time. BUT, after thinking about it and talking to a couple of nurses I am glad this happend. Now Maddox can have a few more weeks to recover and put some more weight on before we try anything new. I think it will be good for him.

Hopefully we'll be able to settle back into life and get back into a routine. Bailee is going to need some re-training. Spending 4 weeks with her 2 grandma's and no mommy around has her thinking she rules the roost. She is super excited that 'her baby' is home. It'll be fun (hopefully) to see her interact with Maddox.

So, a lot of people want to come meet our little guy. And we want to show him off. BUT, we have to be so so so careful and avoid him getting sick. We really appreciate the thought, but for now we're going to have no visitors rule. Hopefully as he get's better we'll be able to loosen that up some, but really--until after his second surgery (sometime after November) and recovery it will be extremely limited. Any kind of infection would be extremely bad for Maddox. We appreciate everyone understanding this, and helping us out.

I promise more pictures soon!