Oh, ROP...

Well, it's been quite a hectic few days since I last posted. Things had been going very well since being moved to the intermediate nursery on Sunday afternoon. In an effort to get Aaron discharged as quickly as possible, they moved his scheduled eye exam from Thursday to Tuesday (07/07/09), which we didn't even find out about until that morning. As usual, he gets nothing to eat before the exam because of the eye drops they put in, which was around 3:30pm. Anyway, the exam didn't get started until 7pm and once finished the he pretty much said, "We need to treat Aaron tonight." Aaron had been borderline for stage 3 ROP since last week and this week he just crossed the line. So, they wanted to treat him as soon as possible to prevent it from progressing any further. They transferred him back to the NICU where the laser surgery was to take place under conscious sedation. As a result, they wanted to intubate him just in case. After leaving him on the warmer before the surgery started, seeing him intubated and with an IV line was the hardest part. It pretty much just brought back memories of the beginning when he needed all that support all the time. I didn't realize how quickly we would "get over" all that once he started doing better.

The surgery was done by 10pm. They actually ended up starting later than we thought because it took 3 doses of the medicine to get our little fighter to calm down! And then, on top of that, it took the neonatologist 30 minutes to intubate him because Aaron was just NOT having it!! One of these days, this little kid has to tell me where he gets all this fight from. They were trying to wean him off the ventilator while the meds wore off but Aaron extubated himself around 4:30am and did wonderfully. He looked so sad but cute with his puffy little eyes. It has now been over 48 hours since the surgery and his eyes have healed so much already! We will find out in a couple weeks how well the surgery went.

Aaron then had his circumcision in the morning (07/08/09). No need to delve into detail here, but Aaron was so achy all over after both these procedures. Again, he had to have nothing to eat before it so his schedule was all messed up. All of this wad done in hopes of bringing him home today.

Last night, Aaron had his car seat test which is done to all preemies before discharge. They pretty much just want to make sure that he breathes well sitting up for an hour in the car seat. Technically Aaron "failed" the first time he took the test. But, today when we tried again we noticed that the night nurse who administered the test didn't take out the extra headrest and neglected to adjust the straps, because we could NOT get Aaron into the seat at all. So he was pretty much sitting hunched over on top of the straps for an hour! It took Clayton almost 15 minutes to adjust everything properly to Aaron's size. Once all of that was done, Aaron didn't go below 95% saturations for the whole hour he was sitting there! He was good to go home.
We talked to the doctor, the resident, the case manager and discharge nurse. We were all set to take Aaron home. But, although doing better than before, he still seemed a little loopy at his 3pm feeding. Clayton and I just felt it best to keep him there overnight and get him back on his feeding schedule and even more recuperated from his procedures. After 117 days, what's one more night. When we called to check in on him tonight, he was officially over 5lbs (2290g), which was surprising considering how much he hasn't eaten in the past 48 hours. He was also back on his eating schedule of waking up half an hour early for each feed!

Tomorrow, Aaron has a follow up with his eye doctor at 8:30am and then we're homebound. At least, that's the plan, though nothing's ever gone as planned with Aaron! Clayton and I can't even begin to tell you how we feel tonight. It's like Christmas Eve, but even better! Finally, we can have a night of (hopefully) sleep with our son next to us!

It's been a long journey and there is absolutely no way the three of us could have made it this far without the grace of God and all of the love and support we have received from our family, friends and others who have been following our story. Thank you a million times over. The journey is actually just beginning and we will definitely be keeping everyone up to date!