Advice please? re:dylan coming home..
Some background twins born 29.5 weeks. Twin A Carter-no major issues home at 36 weeks (almost a month now) Twin B Dylan bas bee in the NICU for 70 days as of today. His major issue has been severe bradycardias. Has been scheduled to come home twice but has had many severe brady episodes prevenitng this. He is on a heart medication to help this that needs to be given every 6 hours and also pepcid for bad reflux. He was scheduled to come again on THursday but yet agan this morning had more bad brady eposides but non that required stim=they were all self-limiting. He is also coming home on a monitor. The drs. say he can still come home on Thursday barring any episodes that require stim but the trush is I don't know how comfortable I am with this.
ON one hand I want him home so bad but I am also terrified that his monitor is going to be going off constantly or he is going to have a really bad episode at home and I'm going to have to do CPR.
Its just a fine line, the nuses say hes at the point where he should be home, but I am sooo scared, I don't know what to do. They are bascially leaving it up to me at this point when for him to come home. What do I do ? IF it was jus tone baby it would be easier but with twins and one that requires so much attention and so much medication how I am going to do this?
ANy opinions if you made it this far reading?
Re: Advice please? re:dylan coming home..
the doctors aren't going to let him come home if he isn't ready. i know that's easy for me to say, but it's true. i think it's one of those things where you have to jump in with both feet and trust that it's going to be ok. it's hard to do that at this point, i'm sure, because we've all been in the position where we trusted things would be ok and they weren't. it was scary for me when we brought DS home, but i got over it pretty quick. even the first alarm (he had a monitor as well) wasn't nearly as scary as i thought it would be.
congrats on the possibility of him coming home! good luck!!
IVF 1=BFP, beta #1 8dp5dt 24, beta #2 12dp5dt 50, beta #3 14dp5dt 88.9
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DS came home on a monitor due to his reflux/brady issues. We were also really nervous about it going off constantly. The first couple days were tense and we were all on edge just waiting for it to go off. Some days it did go off about 10 times, but that was rare. Usually it was just a few times. We only had him on the monitor when he was sleeping or in the car without someone in the backseat to supervise him. In most cases, by the time we got to the monitor to check on DS, he was back to normal breathing, no color change, and he was most likely just pooping or refluxy. After the first 2 weeks, we had to visit the pulmonologist and he said there were no real episodes. He also adjusted his reflux meds and that made a HUGE difference in how often his monitor went off. After the adjustment, his monitor went off maybe 1-2 times in a month. At the next dr. appt. he took DS off the monitor, so we only had to deal with it for 6 weeks.
Now, we only had one baby to deal with and my parents were visiting the first 2 weeks home, so there were plenty of hands to go around. Is there someone that can help you, at least for a few days until things get settled and you get a routine?
i have to say that one baby in this situation is not easy! but i can see how two would be overwhelming.
my son has severe a's and b's. he was in the hospital for 68 days. he had to go two days without an episode before he could come home. and when he did have one he brought himself back. i was terrified to bring him home. he did have a monitor and it was a PITA! we had false alarms all the time. he was on Lasix and had oxygen and a pulse ox monitor. he had a few episodes when he came home but i would just tap his feet and he would come right back, i probably didn't need to do that but it was my immediate reation ya know? never had to do cpr. i did ask the dr.'s "are you sure you won't send my baby home unless you are confident that he will not have any major episodes?" they assured me that we would be fine. we got through it.
Rowen Alexander born 10 weeks early 1/28/07
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