Little Postcards from "Holland": A Day For Remembering

As Hurricane Isaac makes landfall and begins to splash and pound across the gulf coast, I am reminded of a day 7 years ago that feels eerily similar. Actually, it was this exact day, 7 years ago when Hurricane Katrina came ashore in south Louisiana and became one of only a handful of hurricanes in the history of Louisiana, who's name will go down in history. We've all seen the images, the very devastating images of the wrath she brought across 3 states along the gulf coast. We've all heard stories, stories of tragedy and stories of heroism. And if you go to those parts of the country today, you will still see signs that she was there and that those places will never, ever be the same.

New Orleans is my mother's home town. It's where she was born and raised and where she lived until she went away to college. It's also the place my brother, Jason, calls home today. So it holds a special place in my heart and when something like Katrina or Isaac threatens the area, it makes me pay a little closer attention. But on this day, 7 years ago, my attention was diverted elsewhere.

After 98 days spent watching over and holding my baby boy in the NICU at Texas Children's Hospital, we were finally preparing to bring him home. It had been a very long process, one that I wasn't sure would ever come. We actually thought we were going to bring him home a month earlier, but then it was decided that he would need a tracheotomy, and that delayed our homecoming by another month. During that month, we spent time loving him and caring for him and learning how to do so at home. We learned about suctioning secretions from his trach. We learned how to give him a bath without getting water in the trach. We learned how to clean the area around the trach and how often and we learned how to change the trach tube out at least once a month. We went through a few "classes" with one of the nurses on how to do this, using a plastic baby to practice. Then the day came when we had to do it on our real live baby boy. That was pretty scary. But we did it and proved to everyone that we would be able to do this on our own at home. We had already taken a basic infant CPR class, but now we had to repeat the class and learn how to do CPR on an infant with a trach. And our baby had to do a little test of his own to prove that he was ready for the trip. He had to do a car seat test. This means he had to spend 1 hour in his car seat without having any episodes of desaturation or bradycardia. So we took that time to attach his car seat to his stroller and walk around the NICU, saying goodbye to the many nurses who had taken care of him over those 98 days and also to the few families we had met along the way. The hospital did a great job of preparing us and him for the day we had been waiting to come for 3 months. Then the day finally came.

We got him dressed in the cutest little Polo (yes we started him in Polo very early) onesie. We got all of his belongings that he had collected along the way packed up and then we sat and waiting for the Kangaroo Crew to show up. The hospital required that his first car ride home would be in an ambulance, just in case something happened along the way. Once the crew showed up, and he had finally finished his last hospital feeding, we loaded him in his car seat. I remember that he was really small in that seat, and we had to roll up a few blankets and put them around him in the seat so he wouldn't flop around in the extra space. We attached the seat to a gurney, and began to walk out of those NICU doors for the final time. I remember many of the nurses lining up to tell us goodbye on the way out, and I remember one nurse in particular telling us not to come back. That was just her way of telling us to take good care of him and make sure he doesn't need to come back to the hospital, like some other kids end up doing after discharge. We went downstairs and loaded him into the ambulance and we were finally ready to drive him home for the first time.

Tommy rode in the ambulance and I led the way in the car. I couldn't believe this was actually happening. When we drove up in front of our house, we were greeted by a few nurses from the nursing agency we would use. The first few days, we had a nurse around the clock to help us take care of him. Then after those first few days, we had a nurse for about 8 hours during the day and 12 hours at night, giving us about 4 hours by ourselves. That lasted about a week before I was done having someone there during the day. I didn't want to just let someone else take care of him. I wanted to be just like every other mom who took care of their newborn. So I really didn't let the nurse do much to help. I finally decided it wasn't necessary to have someone there during the day when I was doing all of the work myself.

On August 29, 2005, our baby boy was finally home. We brought him inside and layed him down in his crib for the first time. He looked so incredibly small in that crib. I look back at those pictures now and can't imagine that he was ever that small. He did amazingly well with the trip and he adjusted to his new surroundings in no time at all. We were finally home as a family of 3. And with the exception of a few short stays, we made sure to heed the words of that nurse who told us to not come back.