On April 7th, the Saturday before Divine Mercy Sunday, Olivia was discharged from the hospital. It all happened so quickly that I was certain something would stop us from leaving. Olivia had a procedure for her ears on that Thursday and recovered well. During rounds the doctors looked at me and asked, “So, do you have any reason to stick around?”
I was dumbstruck.
Of course we wanted to go home, but by responding with, “No, we have no reason to stay” I knew I was also saying, “Yes, we are ready to take this on at home.” And that was the part that felt the most overwhelmingly.
Taking on Olivia’s cares without a full time nurse has been a challenge, but we continue to find a routine that works for our family. A routine that is full of appointments and phone calls and lots and lots of coconut oil, aquaphor, feeding tubes; and a whole lot of trial and error.
After our first few appointments and the first couple weeks home, it was pretty clear that I wasn’t going to be able to go back to work full time. Since leaving the hospital Olivia has unfortunately stopped eating from a bottle, which means that we are relying on a feeding tube to keep her nourished and hydrated and it’s breaking me. She will nurse, but not often because she rarely feels hunger. Her feeding has been the biggest knot so far because there are so many variables – she had thrush, we changed her fortifier and then changed it back, she no longer latches to the bottle that she took before, and the list goes on.
We avoided talking about my job, knowing the inevitable, until Casey and I finally had a “come to Jesus” moment. We knew it was the right decision to make, but it was also scary. My paycheck has always been the constant that we could base our budget around. The line in the Our Father when we simply ask God, “Give us this day our daily bread” comes to mind regularly these days.
The silver lining in all of this is that it’s giving us the opportunity to really focus in on Casey’s music; and me being home is giving us a lot of time as a family. We know that this is what we’ve wanted for awhile, it just didn’t show up quite the way we expected.
We have been welcomed home in such a sweet way by the familiar and I am so grateful for that. This weekend I went on a run/hike at Garland and found myself huffing up a trail looking at all of the purple around me. Suddenly it hit me that the last time I was on that trail I was only a few weeks out from Olivia’s birth, but I had no idea how soon she would come or how much our world would be turned sideways. This was the very park that I saw those first two coyotes. It was a sense of home when we were in the city not knowing when discharge would come and my mom would say to me, “when you go home we can finally take Olivia to Garland and you can run and I’ll stay back with the kids.” It felt so far off when she said that. But on Saturday I found myself zigzagging on trails that I know like the back of my hand breathing in the smell of dirt and the familiar native plants. Part of me didn’t really feel home until I got sweaty and dusty in this land again. These runs in Garland and along the Pacific are therapeutic for me and I need to remember that because I need a lot of healing and I am working on a lot of forgiveness on events that surrounded Olivia’s hospital birth.
I try to keep these simple comforts and the joy of my kids at the forefront of mind as each day brings its own set of challenges. Luckily, two year olds give you a lot of laughter and preoccupation from adult worries throughout the day.
Current Prayer Requests: Olivia’s feeding, our family as we settle into our new normal with me at home and one income, and for the families that are still in the NICU.
Warmly,
Natalie
+JMJ+
