~The Speth Family~: Home at last!

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Home at last!

This week has been crazy, as usual. Ammon only passed a small portion of his swallow study so really he failed with hope. He can drink up to 15 ccs if they thicken it to the consistency of necter. I have tried feeding him the necter thick stuff twice now, but the first time he drank 7ccs and it wore him out. The second time he drank a few, choked a little, got stressed out, and started sweating like he had just finished a marathon. We get to practice every day until his next swallow study in four weeks.

Since he only got a 50% on his study they were going to send him home on Wednesday, but then his hematocrit came back a little low (from daily blood draws) so they gave him a transfusion and had to watch him for another 24 hours.

To keep it short, we brought him home today! Yay :) What an ordeal! We had more lectures this morning from the speech therapist (feedings) and the physical therapist, both of which will send people to our house each week. The NP was in to give us his medication schedule, appointments and more talk about watching for distress and withdrawls. As soon as we got him bathed, medicated and hooked up to the oxygen, pulse ox, and feeding syringe, in his car seat, and bundled, we took our little boy and ran. It felt weird. I felt like I was doing something I wasn't supposed to - stealing him! Obviously that didn't stop us :)

The girls LOVE him! They were SUPER excited. When I picked them up from my parents house they asked me if we could take the freeway home (John was there with Ammon). Kylie said it would be faster that way. A home health guy just delived three boxes of supplies and medications (in addition to the eight RXs we left the hospital with) and we are now waiting for the nurse to show up and set up the pumps for his feeds and IV meds....

It feels sooooo good to have him home! We are super excited! We are limiting visitors right now to relatives (minus children) because we have to keep him healthy or we go straight back to Primary's. Hopefully we will be able to allow more visits as he gets bigger and healthier. In the meantime, here are a few pics of us getting ready to break him out of jail and of his sisters meeting him for the second time.

6 comments:

JulieFebruary 11, 2010 at 7:04 PM
oh, welcome home little Ammon! That's so exciting - Congrats!
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JoniFebruary 11, 2010 at 7:26 PM
Hooray!! I am so glad he is finally home with you all. I've never had to leave the hospital without the baby, so I cannot imagine how hard it has been to leave him behind every day. We are praying that he just keeps getting bigger and stronger!

Love your long lost cousins!
Joni and Tim
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AngelaFebruary 11, 2010 at 9:42 PM
I am so excited for you guys. If you need anything just call.
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HeidiFebruary 12, 2010 at 9:53 AM
Yeah!!!! Congratulations!!! We are SO glad to hear your wonderful news!! Wow, what a great day. Congrats on him passing the tests and getting all that done. So happy for you! Loves and hugs!
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BrandiFebruary 16, 2010 at 4:59 PM
Yay, Ammon!! I'm so happy to hear that he's home. We're so happy for you. I pray that he will get stronger and stronger (and chubbier and chubbier) every day. Congrats on being all together as a family. Enjoy!
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John and SuziFebruary 16, 2010 at 9:00 PM
Thanks everyone for being excited for us :) So sweet.
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