We are home!!!

After 11 days in the hospital we are finally home :) Aubrey was discharged Monday evening a little after 6pm. We were beginning to think that they were going to keep us another day when the nurse showed up...she is officially our new favorite person. We spent 7 days at MedCentral and 4 days at Akron Children's hospital. I never in a million years expected to be hospitalized for that long. Poor Aubrey had so many test run, but thankfully everything that we have gotten back has been normal so far. We are still pending the results of the Keryotyping (sp) to look specifically at her chromosomes and we will get those results at our follow up visit in about 4 weeks. She had an MRI of her brain on Monday, everything looked normal. I think that was by far the most stressful part of the hospitalization. It took them nearly an hour to find an appropriate vein and place her IV. She was so exhausted when they brought her back to us she couldn't even take her bottle and promptly fell asleep. I was very worried as she had to be NPO starting at 1am because of the sedation for the MRI and I could not wake her enough to eat. So she ended up going from 10:30pm till 9:30am the following day without eating. She was a trooper until after the test...then she let the entire hospital know how pissed she was that her belly was hungry. Watching them sedate her was probably one of the most difficult things I have ever done. It was beyond scary to put my baby's life in a bunch of strangers hands. The doctors and nurses we encountered during our stay were amazing. I am so very thankful for the kind and compassionate care we got. It definitely made being in the hospital the best it could be. I'm very glad to be home and hope that we can maintain her weigh gain so that we don't have to be readmitted...we will have weekly wt. checks to ensure she is continuing to gain. I have a feeling I'm going to hate our Friday pediatrician appointments!!! I hate to have the possibility of being readmitted hanging over our heads, but if that is what is going to make her grow big and healthy then I'll put on my happy face and do what I'm told :) She went to the hospital weighing 10lbs and left weighing 11lbs 5oz!!! The doctors decided that she was burning too much energy eating so we have changed bottles (okay so I horded all the bottles they used with her at the hospital because they just toss them) and found a med. flow nipple. So far she seems to be tolerating it well. My biggest concern is that if the formula flows too quickly that she will aspirate and we will end up dealing with aspiration pneumonia...I'm thankful that we have not had to deal with that with her being at risk due to her aspiration. Being at Akron Children's made me realize how lucky we are that our children are healthy and that being there for 11 days with nothing but good results is truly a blessing. Seeing all the bald headed children with masks on their faces, ports in their arms, and NG tubes just broke my heart. Seeing a grown man slouched on the floor in front of his child's room sobbing with the whole nursing staff was running in and out of the room is not a site I will soon forget. I do not even want to imagine what that poor family was going through. I'm thankful that an IV and an MRI are the worst things my Aubrey had to endure. I definitely hugged my kiddos tight when we got home. Mackenzie and Brooklynn handled the whole ordeal better than we could have asked. They are very happy to have us all back at home and I'm sure it will be nice to get back to "normal" life! We were both off work today to attempt to put the house back together, get some groceries, and just spend some time with the older kids! In 11 days I was only home 2x's! It felt so nice to sleep in my own bed last night. Hopefully life will settle down a bit and we can get back to our normal boring routine ASAP.