4/11 - Happy Birthday Sweet Baby

Unfortunately Leo is spending another birthday in the hospital. This makes 4 out of 5, but hopefully his last. Today one of the docs jokingly said we will aim to have him out before his next birthday. I thought you better have him discharged long before that!

We got good news for his birthday....we received our long awaited nursing hours from the state! Originally they told us it wouldn't take longer than two weeks, but today was day 16 so we were getting worried. We were given a budget of $16,500 per month which equates to about 115ish nursing hours per week. Considering there is only 168 hours in a week, that is a lot of nursing! As long as we can find nurses to fill the shifts we will basically have all nights and weekdays covered. Greats News!!! Hopefully we will have a discharge planning meeting next week where they officially set our discharge date. We should go home in 2-3 weeks as long as our nursing agency has found us enough nurses to cover our shifts. The doctor will not let you go home without being fully staffed :(. If anyone knows any LPNs or RNs (even if they are just friends of friends) who might be interested in home nursing part-time or full-time and day or night please send them our way. 

Before the hospital will release a trached child to go home the parents must stay at the hospital for 24 hours and complete 100% of the child's cares. Tonight Terry and I are both staying at the hospital and getting our 24 hours stay out of the way. We stay here a lot, but we usually sleep and let the nurses take the 12:00-6:00 shift, but tonight that will be all us. Wish us luck! It is the last step in the going home process that we can control.

While we stay at the hospital for 24hrs of course Grandma is staying with miss Sammie. She had her first play date today with a friend she made on her own. A little girl from music class asked her over for a play date :).........ok in reality Grandma Helen talked to this little girl's grandma and set things up, but it is still exciting that Sammie has a friend whose parents were not my friends first. She came up to the hospital again on Wednesday and visited with Leo. She continued to enjoy the snacks and TV while giving her brother lots of love.