It's getting closer

[Heart Mommy]

I know that we have a few families just about ready to have their babies.. I keep watching to make sure I haven't missed their special days. As it gets closer and closer, do you have those hot/cold moments? Moments when you think, Bring it on... Lets do this heart baby thing.... And other moments when you say.... Please stay in there longer, safe, warm and getting strong? Have you cried all the tears that are in your head? When you do have your baby it will be different for you than it was for me... but, here a some MORE things that I wish..... Are you tired of this yet?

So I am like a major planner. A planner to the point that I am sure that it is an illness.... It sounds like that is true for many of us.LOL....
To prepare our home I wanted everything perfect and not perfect... The fickle preggers lady was in charge so my hubs just nodded...Gator's room was the biggest NOT prepare thing. I was so worried that we wouldn't have a chance to bring him home to it that I didn't want to nest in there. I didn't have the crib set up, no clothes washed, nothing that would indicate that a baby would soon fill the smells, sounds, and corners of this room. I made my friend and neighbor promise that when we moved to the third floor of the hospital and we thought Gator would be coming home soon, she would be on room detail. I wish I had treated his room like any other child. Even though my friend did a fantastic job, it was his room and if we hadn't gotten it ready and we lost him I would have hated that I had no connection to his space(to be)
Other than that, I set about making every other corner of the house clean. We even had the carpets cleaned the day before we went to the hospital so that it would be as sickie-gone as I could make it. One of my other friends came with a cleaning crew as a gift and did all the hard to get things for a preggers girl. It was Heaven!!!!! I think I might start giving that to new babies families as my gift because it felt so dang nice.
I made a list of bills that I knew would come up while we were at the hospital, this freed us up to think about baby and not worry about "regular things"
I love that Chrissi said take more breaks. This is hard to do but it is healthy. I was so lucky to have so many wonderful people at the hospital at the same time as us... Unfortunately I NEED people. I won't pretend it wasn't hard when their child did better and they went home. I just wanted the same for my child. But they will carry you when you are feeling very low.
If you find out there is a nurse you like did you know that you can request them again and again. We LOVE Judy the night nurse. She puts music on for our child and puts candy out for all the other nurses... For some reason when people see the candy it makes them happy, that brings good feelings to my gator, that good karma seeps into the room... Silly I know.LOL. But, she is awesome!!!! There are a ton of amazing day nurses too...


I know it is getting closer and I just wanted you guys to know that we "old"timers haven't forgotten you....

Much Love.

Brynn Homer
IHH Sec

[Carinne]

Thanks for talking about the nursery. I've been struggling with getting ours ready- my husband is the one who set up the crib, he was sick of seeing it undone. I guess I am fearful that the baby won't come home, but it probably would be more sad to not at least have the nursery to go to and mourn the loss. I finally bought an outfit for the baby; I wanted to wait until after our fetal echo, I didn't want REALLY bad news. Now I think I will will finish getting the nursery ready- decorate, make the bed, etc. Thanks for your post- it has helped me decide to get prepared.

[JoeyG]

Wow Brynn, you really have been through this! EVERYTHING you just wrote, describes my rollercoaster of emotion perfectly. All this week, I felt ready to face this head-on, then out of the blue, last night as I was watching "Wild Recon" (of all things), I had a flash of my sweet baby on a heart-lung machine, and I sobbed for about an hour.

Thank you for the heads-up on the house prep. I asked our Cardiologist at the last Echo about that, and he told us to basically prepare as we would for any newborn coming home, but that seems easier said than done. Granted, we're pretty setup already having a 2yr old ...she's still in her crib at the moment (little does she know ...big girl bed is in her near future). But I haven't taken the step of washing Cate's sleepers that I saved for this baby, or the new sleeper that I got as her Christmas gift. Like you and Carinne said, I just keep thinking about that chance she won't come home.

I do have carpet cleaning on our list of to-do's for the next month. As hard as it is with this belly, I'm still fairing pretty well as a neat freak (despite my little tornado, Cate) ...are there any "special" prep or items of cleaning you would suggest? I keep trying to think of what else I can do to prepare, as I avoid the obvious (get ready for a baby to come home).

Brynn, thank you so much!! You can't imagine how helpful your last few posts have been for us newbees.

[Chrissie]

Lysol and sanatizer! LOL Oh and clorox wipes. We pretty much pay the sanatizer's companies wages LOL I like to use the hospital brand because I think people really get the hint your really serious about the no germ thing, but germx works too. I am so glad you are getting things in order. I never did, wish I could have because when we did bring Kylie home it was a mess trying to get things together. I didn't even buy a carseat/stroller until we heard the "H" word. GOOD LUCK we are so very excited for all of you to meet your new little ones. When is your due date again? I always forget.

Chrissie

[JoeyG]

Hey Chrissie! Our due date is 2/28. I'm definitely going to load up on the wipes; I have tons of hand sanitizer, I just need to start placing it in strategic places around the house.

As scary as it seems to me, I'm gonna start getting her baby clothes and blankets ready in the next week. Thanks again to you and Brynn for helping me make that step.

And wish us luck today; they're having us come back in for another Nonstress Test and Amniotic fluid measurement. Baby had a heart deceleration at the beginning of yesterday's NST that Dr Byrne didn't like. I'm praying like crazy hoping that everything is still OK. I'll let ya all know how it goes.

And Chrissie, hope you're doing OK girl!

[Heart Mommy]

Hand cleaner of all sorts. Sanitizer and soap for the bathrooms... And lotion, we washed so much our hands began to bleed. LOL.... And Clorox wipes and those really small cans of spray. I usually keep them in my purse. We also got an accordian file for all the bills, we labled them with each place we would recieve a bill, The UofU, PCMC, our insurances'(Colonial Life and Select Health), info the dr.s and nurses gave us regarding Gator, Home health, EI, Pediatricians office, any government assistance and copies of applications (SSI, Medicaid, WIC), Programs and classes we could look into (Songs of love, Hope kids, Make a Wish), Study programs that we are involved in, and prescriptions. Your gonna need the big one. We do it every year and as soon as we get the bill/paperwork we go over it. Then file it by date for easy reference. The paper work alone can be overwhelming. I think we need to keep these for about 3-4 years. It almost takes a part time job to figure it all out. We also have a small book with all of the business cards so that we can find numbers easy. But I promise you will memorize the important ones... LOL.... We also paid 25 dollars to get all of Gators x-ray images. I also had to get his medical records for some insurance purps and so now we have all of his records including prenatel care and the exact things they did durring surgery. They we interesting and healing for me to read, but really unnerving and hard for my hubs.

Also I would buy a few of those tupperware drawer thingies in small and larger sizes for all your supplies, if your baby needs feeding supplies or even the little things like O2 supplies and tape... I love having everything in one spot. I recently posted a picture of Gator's closet right now. We don't have even half of the things we used to when he was little, but this will give you a small idea of what I am talking about. Our blog is joinedbyourhearts.blogspot.com

Good luck, (buy stock in Hand Sanatizer... Not really)

Oh yeah, remember these are the things that worked for me... You don't HAVE to do any of it.

Also I found asprin cutters at the dollar store... WHOOOOHOOO!

[Cyndlouwho]

Oh, I just thought of something one of the home health care workers said to me when we first brought Dylan home. He told me that instead of using towels to dry hands in the bathroom, we should keep some paper towels in there instead because it does help stop the spread of germs. Hm. Maybe I should go back to doing that...

[JoeyG]

Thanks again, guys! Our insurance care manager had mentioned getting the accordion files; thank you for the reminder -- I've got it on the Walmart list, along with more clorox wipes and lotion (my hands are already dry, I can only imagine how bad it will get when we step it up upon her arrival).

I've heard about hospitals using zip drives and such for medical records. Were those tough to obtain for Gator? Do I need to wait for an insurance request to get them, or will the hospital provide those upon request?

I'm not sure if you all have seen this before; I happened upon it when my hubby started cholesterol medication a couple yrs ago -- it's a free, online medical ID card creator:
http://medids.com/free-id.php

Again, I can't thank you all enough for your very helpful ideas, thoughts and encouragement. I swear, I wish I could reach out and give you all big heart hugs!

[Alli and Kyle Hicken]

Good luck in the coming weeks! If you are making the shopping list, I would include some thank you cards for the hospital stay as well. I loved having a stack to write a note as I thought of it...doctors, nurses, staff, and friends who offer great support!

As far as the house preparation thing, I have a few favorite products. Don Aslett's cleaning center makes a spray called "sani-fab" that is fabulous. It will kill ANYTHING and it works on porous surfaces (couches, carpet, stuffed animals, etc.) When we were close to going home, some neighbors volunteered to deep clean and sterilize our house and they used this stuff everywhere. Love it. I also swear by Clorox Anywhere. It is in a white bottle and is a cleaner that is able to kill germs, but safe enough to use on surfaces that come into contact with mouths without having to wipe afterward. I spray it on toys and the highchair when I am low on time, but still want things clean. I also love the Medela breast pump microwave sterilizer bags. I bought mine at Target. They were very handy for quickly sterilizing pump equipment while in the hospital (and not near a dishwasher!) and now I am always tossing in toys, pacifiers, spoons, etc. for sterilizing when I am on the go.

In the last few weeks of my pregnancy, I turned all of my nesting time into hospital prep and it paid off! Don't stress too much over the small things...you will have time to finish whatever you don't get done! Oh...one more thing....don't forget things to entertain yourself on long hospital days! Sometimes, you can't hold your baby. The night before I was induced, my husband bought the season to one of our favorite television comedies and we watched it while I was in labor and then we would often watch on a laptop in the cafeteria during shift change. It made for a nice break from reality and was something that we enjoyed passing the time with. Keep us posted!

Alli

[Heart Mommy]

I went to the sight.. it is perfect. Gator has a really cute ID bracellet but, I always worry about needing additional info. So this will be perfect. Ummmm.. His medical records were not hard to get because they were requested by our insurance and our pediatrician. I have heard that it has been difficult for other families. They also had to pay a fee of some sort, although I think it wasn't super extravigant. But the xray images where a piece of cake I just told them I wanted a copy and they made two cd's for 25.00$ I think I got them about an hour later. I can't remember but I think I provided the cd's but you could do it on zip drives. That would be really handy. Good thinking. I know Christina our treasurer has a med ID bracellet for her son and it has a phone number to a company that knows everything about him, then when the paramedics/police need anything they can just call the number. I really want to do it. The other thing we have is a program on my palm that you add in all the information... I don't like it at all. It takes forever to add in all the info and then you can only veiw the info on my palm which I don't even carry anymore. So it was a waste. It might be good for someone else.. But I don't recomend it.