discharging from nicu soon...

excited-to-be

Im not one to post often but getting nervous about my son leaving nicu & coming home. born at 25wks 3days weighing 1lbs. 14oz nov 24th. now about 5lbs. doctors started telling us that he will need to come home with oxygen. have any of you ladies dealt with this? how did the bottle feedings go...thanks for listening.Im hoping he will only need it for a few weeks but ...i guess we will find out.

 

 

 

KatFCo

DD came home on oxygen. She had a nasal cannula and a long tube that stretched around the whole (tiny) apartment.

We had a compressor (I think this is what it was called--the machine) for at home. It stayed in her room and we just carried her around with the tubes. If you have a larger home, though, it wouldn't work as well because they can only be about 20 or 25 feet long, if I recall correctly (this was 5 years ago).

For emergencies and when we went out, we had several portable tanks. It came with a sleeve you could strap on your shoulder.

We also had to let the power company know there was someone with oxygen at home so if there was a power outage they would know to come fix it ASAP.

Bottle feedings were fine. I'm not sure what you're asking with that. I assume he's on oxygen now and eating fine? You'll have a monitor, which will ease your peace of mind, but the leads can get to be really annoying to keep on and in the right place.

Get sleepers that snap up the middle. It makes dealing with leads so much easier because you can just thread them through the gaps between snaps.

Brummy14

DD2 is home on oxygen...we use the compressor in her room at night, and the large tank downstairs during the day. Like PP mentioned, the most frustrating thing is getting that pulse ox to stay in place for the monitors...most insurance companies will only cover one per week bc they apparently cost a TON, so getting it to function that long can be a challenge. Other than that, we have a smaller tank for doctor visits, and using all of these items is pretty easy...just adds a few minutes getting out of the door, and limits the radius in which you can wander around with LO in your arms.

Brummy14

As for bottle feedings, DD2 just had her NG tube pulled yesterday, so we'll see if she does well enough without it. She's struggled with reflux, congestion on account of the reflux, and them with O2 blowing up her nose...all of which have made bottling a bit more of a challenge for her. Not sure how long you've been bottling, but just bear with it ... we started around 35 weeks, DD1 was all by mouth after five frustrating weeks, and now DD2 is at seven weeks attempting...and may justttt be there. We'll see...