Settling In

We're getting settled after the big move yesterday. Last night went fine, with Carla and I serving diaper/bottle duty in shifts so both of us got some sleep. The machines and medicine routine are working well. Today we'll try to straighten out the tornado that moved from the NICU to our car, then to our house . . . bags and boxes of supplies and paraphernalia sent home with us from the NICU. Those folks think of everything and provide lots of samples to make sure we don't have to run to Wal-Mart for several days for supplies. And it's a good thing, because we weren't doing much clear thinking the past few days.

Below are some pictures of Hannah's set-up. Most of this will go away once she's off the oxygen in a month or so. The yellow unit with the orange display is the pulse oximeter, displaying the percentage of oxygen saturation in Hannah's blood, which it measures by shining a light through her toes and watching the pulse rate and the color of her blood (oxygen-rich blood is redder than oxygen-poor blood). The white unit with the orange sticker on top is the apnea monitor, which measures her heart and breath rates using two electrodes held against her chest with a velcro band. The gray unit with the round white lid is a suction machine in case we need to clear her airways of gunk. And her meds are in the white tray in the middle, with the exception of one in the fridge because it has to be kept refrigerated. The pink unit in the bassinet is the food-oxygen exchange unit. It requires a constant supply of oxygen, fat, protein, and calcium, which it turns into poop and baby. The bassinet is raised slightly on one end with bricks because a leaky seal in the unit's input port sometimes causes some leakage that affects operating efficiency.


The unit below is the oxygen machine, which pulls oxygen out of the room air and concentrates it from 21% to 97%. This is better than a tank because it never has to be refilled. It's fairly loud, so we have it across the hall, with the oxygen tube running into the bedroom. There's 50 feet of tubing, so we carry Hannah all around the house, dragging the tube behind. The tanks to the left of the machine are portable oxygen tanks used for backup (a power outage, for example) and for traveling to the doctor's office.