BABY IN BEANTOWN: OHS Day 4

AND WE’RE FREE!!!

Beating all expectations, Lyla was discharged from the hospital on Day 4. You go girl.

The day started off with Miss Thang impressing us with her sitting skills, desire to play with the new toys sent from adoring fans, and ability to get right back on the Hungry horse. As each white coated doctor or nurse practitioner came in for rounds, they would express how awesome she looked propped up on our lap versus glued to the hospital bed. They couldn’t believe how well she was doing after just getting her chest cracked open. So impressed that the words “discharged today” started to float around.

Wait, is my caffeine buzz paying with my head? Did they just say we can go home in a couple of hours??!!

I didn’t want to get my hopes up since large hospital time usually equals space time where the lack of gravity makes everything move half as fast. A place where you have to call the nurse for a bottle to be made and it shows up 20 minutes later. Hello?! I have a fussy hungry child here, and that takes 5 minutes at home. Or when they have to weigh each diaper after it’s been soiled. You remove the first #2 she’s done in 24 hours after plenty of foreign medicines and your first instinct is to get the stink bomb being handled like nuclear waste over to the covered trash bin in your 10’x10’ “home”. The place isn’t exactly well ventilated with a flowing breeze from the sealed shut 8th floor windows. Nope, instead you must leave it out in the open for everyone to enjoy and chill with the new air freshener until the nurse is available her next time in. Not complaining since the big-hearted staff really did take care of us. Just love our Diaper Genie at home that much more.

To my surprise, everyone pulled together and got us out the House of Healing doors by 4:00pm. Hallelujah. We left our mark in the recovery wing. They’re going through some renovations and have these temporary walls up that everyone writes on. We of course left photographs!

You know when everything is happening so fast so that you can’t even really grasp the significance of what’s happening before your eyes? Just going through the motions of what someone is directing you to do, but not really understanding the meaning of them. That’s what Day 4 was like.

Hell, that was the whole hospital stay now that I think of it.

How one goes from lying on an operating table, chest open, heart stopped, lungs stopped - and then a mere 80 hours later is out the hospital doors like nothing ever happened is beyond me. As I quote my hilarious cousin Katie, “I couldn’t even recover from my wisdom teeth being pulled that quickly!” Well put.

But she’s home. And putting her to sleep in her own comfy cozy, dimly lit yellow-walled nursery last night was glorious. No more white walls. No more bright lights. No more crib that looks like a monkey cage. Just home.