very superstitious

Today Nurse Lindsay told us that Davis is next on the list to go to the Transitional Care Nursery (TCN). This is great news! The TCN is for babies who are working on feeding & growing- in other words, healthier kids who are on their way HOME!!!! He'd be there now if they had enough space for him. We toured the TCN today and it seemed more peaceful & quiet than the NICU. His nurses can follow him there, which is really important to us. Davis has amazing nurses. Even though I really want to take Davis home, when I think of leaving Jennie, Yvette, Shanda, Lindsay, & all his other primaries, I get a little choked up. These ladies literally saved his life, and they did it with so much skill, love, and compassion that I feel like we could never thank them enough. 

The big issue keeping us in the hospital is feeding. Davis eats through an NG tube that goes through his nose all the way down to his stomach. We're working on encouraging him to try eating by mouth... so far, it's slow going. The nurses say that one day a light bulb will go off, and all of a sudden he'll just get the hang of it. We sure hope so! He did take 16 cc's from a bottle today... it's a start.

We've started making predictions on when we'll be home. I would have never let myself do this even a week ago. There's a certain kind of superstition that I think is common to parents who have NICU babies. It manifests in lots of little ways, and I think the doctors and nurses feel it too. For example, for weeks I never wanted anyone to even say the word ECMO around Davis. If he was having a good night, the doctors would tell us his success in half whispers, always followed by "but don't tell him that" or something similar. We would never ask questions that started in "how long" or "when", partly because we didn't want to get our hopes up and partly because we were scared to jinx him. Maybe it was lack of sleep, but I would try to read almost anything as some sort of sign of what the future held for our sweet little son. Sound crazy? 

Then, the other day, it occurred to me (finally) that maybe I can stop holding my breath. We really are going to take Davis home, and that day is probably sooner than I realize. Even though he's been doing fantastically well for a little while now, it's only very recently that I've let myself believe he's out of the woods. That being said, Michael is predicting we'll be home in a few weeks. I'm going out on a limb here (NICU superstition be damned!), but I think he may be right. 

Even if it takes a little longer, we are so lucky. Davis is way ahead of the curve comparative to other CDH cases- we count our blessings every day.