no nurse today - not by choice

September 16, 2011

My morning started with getting up at 545am to pump, eat breakfast, get the two big boys ready for school and the 2 year old dressed and fed, all before my night nurse left at 7am.  Not being told until 10pm last night that I wasn’t going to have daytime coverage today, I then left two strong messages to the Case Manager and the Co-Owner of our Home Nursing Agency stating that the lack of timeliness and communication are unacceptable in terms of daily nursing coverage or lack thereof and I also stating that I am not confident that this Agency will be able to fulfill my son’s nursing needs. Once I got that off my chest, my day actually went pretty well. Grandma thankfully happened to be off today and came over to take care of the 2 year old who has a cold. I spend my day with Wyatt and I must say, I enjoyed the uninterrupted snuggle time. With all the hours of phone calls the last week, I didn’t really have time yet to enjoy having Wyatt home- until today. And I have confidence in my nursing skills now. I knew I could do it before but today was sort of like a test. Taking care of strictly Wyatt is not the issue around here though. Taking care of him is a constant go, go, go but I can manage. How I’ll ever be able to take care of Wyatt when the other kids are home and I don’t have help with them, that’s the big question and gamble. I can’t leave Wyatt out of sight because as soon as he gets upset he could silently cry so hard that he has the Smurfs. Someone has to watch him at all times. The Pulse Ox alarm is not reliable. It doesn’t even go off until he’s already blue and then it usually loses signal. The apnea monitor is a complete waste, it never goes off. So unless you’re watching him, there is no warning that he’s about to have an episode. By the time you hear the Pulse Ox go off, he’s already in the middle of an episode and it’s too late at that point to try to calm him down and stop it. It’s hard to watch him go through that knowing that all you can do is ride it out with him and talk him through it. Today he only had 5 episodes; it was a good day… I’m going to hit the pillow now. We thankfully have a night nurse. She’s only a fill in but she’s really good. Tomorrow we again don’t have a nurse during the day. I’m not thrilled about staffing right now. THANK YOU grandma for saving me and taking on the task of entertaining the other 3 kids!!!

tummy time is exhausting