Not long after I posted my last update, I got a text from Anna. She told me there wasn't any real update; C is still in the hospital, DFCS hasn't taken custody yet, but she still expects them to do so. She also said she still didn't have any sense of a timeframe for C's expected discharge.
So, we went about our busy weekend baby-free...and kind of relieved about it. (Mr D was out of town all weekend so I was parenting solo, Peter had a cross country meet that was over an hour away, Susan had a school project to work on, I had a church committee meeting....all things we could have managed with a baby, but it was for sure simpler not to have one.)
And today begins a new week of waiting. I do feel that nothing surprising will happen on a weekend, so I was able to put the question mark of when she was coming out of my head for the past few days. But, now, it is Monday morning. And I will spend each day this week wondering when the call will come. And will the call be an update -- with a window of time to prepare? Or will it be, essentially, "so, I'm on my way..."? I'm hoping for the former, because we haven't told the kids (or anyone else). And since we haven't told them, we haven't even begun to set up baby equipment or pull infant clothes out of storage boxes.
I think it will be an update first. We had a few days advance notice with Lucy. Which stretched into a few more days as the hospital decided to keep her a few extra days. So, that could happen again. But what I don't know is what the county caseworker is thinking. Were the extra days notice with Lucy available because the caseworker was working on making sure she had a placement ready? And does she think she already has that this time? We shall see, I suppose.
Still have Dreft, but it's getting very low....
We got one of our babies as a discharge straight from the NICU. But the NICU requires "rooming in" for 24 hours normally for a parent to prove they could handle the meds/feeding routines of the baby. They cut it down to eight hours for us (two rounds of meds and feeds). But we got the call one day-on a Friday afternoon- (CPS only took custody once the baby was imminently ready for discharge), roomed in the next, and took him home ourselves on Saturday night vs. CPS dropping him off at our house. We also had to watch the baby CPR video again and sign off on that training, which did count toward our licensing training hours. A rule of thumb (which you might already be well aware of) is that a preemie is usually ready for discharge around his or her original due date. Hope this helps with your time frame!
ReplyDeleteThanks! Unfortunately, we still don't even know what the baby's due date actually was. Lucy (formerly "M") came to us as a preemie straight from a NICU, but she came from a different hospital. She was still a month before her due date; the hospital released her to the DFCS caseworker, but she was not on any meds and the only special care was ensuring she ate on a schedule. When she went back into the NICU after she came here, they accepted our CPR certification but made us watch a video on colic ("the period of purple crying"); that was a children's hospital, though, not a maternity NICU. Amazing how different these policies/procedures can be!
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