...and a Crazy Day!

I answered the phone and Mr D told me that he was still at the hospital, M was fine, but he was exhausted and I should check my texts and call him back. He had sent me text updates as things happened, knowing they wouldn't wake me, and that way the timeline was clear and coherent as it would not have been if he'd tried to tell me about it by the time we were talking. (He's a smart man.)

The children's hospital had not agreed with the emergency room's plan to send M home. Instead, they wanted her transported to their emergency room, via a special pediatric transport ambulance. Mr D waited 3 hours for the ambulance, because there's only one and she was now pretty low on the triage list for it. (After all, she was stable and in a hospital.)

Around 3am, she was in the children's hospital ER and nurses were attempting to take blood. That was when it happened again. Monitors went crazy and she began turning blue again. One nurse ran out of the room, carrying M and giving rescue breaths as she went. Another paused long enough to tell Mr D that they were heading to a trauma room immediately because M's heart and respiratory rates had dropped dangerously low. Once they had her stable again, she was admitted.

When Mr D and I spoke on the phone, they were in a PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care) room. He had an idea for a plan for the day, so we discussed it. I would get the respite boys up and take them with me to take Peter to his event, drop Peter off, come home to meet person picking up the respite boys, then go back to the event. Seemed like the best idea and it worked fairly well. (The sporting event was the opposite direction from the person who was coming to get the boys, so it wasn't realistic to change that plan, even if I had wanted to call that person -- who I didn't know -- that early on a Saturday morning!) In the end, I missed all of Peter's actual competition, but he was graciously understanding, which was a relief.

M was transferred from the PICU to the NICU on Saturday afternoon, at which point Mr D finally came home. She had spent a total of about 24 hours in our home before returning to the hospital.

Crazy Week....

So, Baby M was supposed to come to us on a Monday, direct from the NICU.

I was meeting the foster mom of the respite boys for the handoff on the Wednesday, mid-day.

We spent Monday morning scurrying about, doing everything we could think of that might need to be done in the next week. Caught up on laundry and ironing, grocery shopping done, bedrooms prepped for kids to arrive, pack-and-play set up in our room for the baby. Early Monday afternoon, we got a phone call that the baby wasn't coming today after all. She'd had "a rough weekend," the hospital said, and they would keep her until Thursday, probably not arriving here until early evening that day. (The "rough weekend" was later defined as a drop on one of her monitors, the hospital insisting that it was so short that it wouldn't have even been noticed if she hadn't been on the monitor already.)

Well, that was OK, we thought. It meant the first day and half with the respite boys would be just them. It meant we'd really only have Friday when we would have 6 kids in our home as the respite boys were set to be picked up Saturday at 9am.

The respite boys were a lot of fun. The 3 year old was lots of energy, lots of questions, lots of playing with trucks and trains and blocks and crayons. The 1 year old was cuddly and easy; he ate, he slept, he crawled slowly across the floor to pick up things and then hand them to me. We did some fun stuff on the Thursday -- go to the park, make some muffins, play with Play-dough -- knowing that Friday would be very much a survival day. Unfortunately, the 1 year old had a touch of the sniffles. Not a good thing with a preemie coming into the house....

The respite boys were fed, but not yet down for the night when Baby M came. She is tiny and came with instructions to keep her homebound as much as possible for about 2 months. The agency caseworker who brought her to me informed me that the hospital had made her an appointment with the pediatrician for Friday morning. Could I make that appointment? A moment of panic ensued as I envisioned trying to manage a doctor's appointment with all 3 of these kids. Mr D decided that he could take the morning off of work, so we could divide and conquer. The caseworker insisted that I call her if we needed anything, mentioning a specific person she had in mind who could probably come to the house to help me out if needed.

I posted about how bad I am at asking for help......so, of course, I said I'd be fine.

By morning, I knew I wouldn't be fine.  M was eating every 3 hours (whether she thought she was hungry or not), but taking nearly an hour at each feeding. We were both exhausted and the 1 year old's sniffles had added a cough.

We texted the caseworker at 7am, telling her that it would actually be great if that person ("Marcie") could come help out. The caseworker called me about 30 minutes later to talk through what exactly we needed. I told her about the 1 year old's cough and said I was concerned about keeping the germs causing that away from the baby. Mr D would be home until about noon, but then he did need to go to work; I didn't want to be alone with the 3 little ones, so maybe Marcie could lend me a hand that afternoon? Caseworker would call Marcie, figure out a plan, then call me back. Mr D and I discussed the fact that the ideal would really be for Marcie to just come take the two respite boys out for the afternoon.

Caseworker called me back and said that Marcie didn't think she should be around the baby (she was on antibiotics for a sinus infection herself) and she had some errands to run, but she could come take the 1 year old with her and bring him back after her work was done. She probably couldn't have him back here until about 7 or 8 o'clock, was that OK?

Um, yes! I could cope with the 3 year old and the baby. The 3 year old was old enough to wait a minute or two if necessary, old enough to be set up with an activity that would keep him occupied through a feeding, old enough to keep toys out of his mouth! The baby just ate and slept.

So, that was the Friday. It got even more exciting that evening, but this post is already too long....

I am insane

Well, I'm either insane or unable to form the word "No."

We were going to wait until the first of April to even consider taking any new placements. The last weekend in March was going to be busy with family activities, so we'd get through that and then be "open."

(Have we ever actually waited as long as we said we would to be open?)

Then I got an email. "I know you aren't open yet, but would you be willing to do a few respite days next week? This family is trying to go out of town for a wedding and need someone to take the foster boys, ages 1 and 3...." And, of course, my favorite part of the email: "If you can't do it, feel free to say no. But you're kind of our last option. It's hard to find someone to take them during the week."

I've been on the other side of the respite request too many times to say no to that. I kind of tried, because the last day of respite was going to be that busy Saturday at the end of March, so I said I could take them, but would need them to be able to leave first thing Saturday morning.

So, that was planned.

Then (here comes the insane part), I got a phone call. "I know you aren't open yet, but...." We had told the agency we wanted to be considered for potential adoptive placements, specifically of a little girl. They'd just gotten a call -- 1 month old girl, born prematurely, being discharged from the hospital NICU into foster care, mother has been TPR'ed on two other children already. How could I say No to that either?

She was due to come to us two days before the respite boys. The agency offered me the chance to back out of the respite, but how could we do that? Make someone else's respite care fall through 5 days before they were supposed to leave town for a wedding?

The result was craziness in our house for several days. It got even crazier than we could have imagined.....but the baby is waking up, so I'll have to post more later.