The beginning of the end of the beginning

I forgot to chronicle for a while. I was sidetracked by my parents arrival. With Nico's homecoming in mind, a few months ago a fab friend of mine offered to help me make curtains for his room as I was having trouble finding what I wanted in ready-mades. When I say 'help me', I would like to clarify that I know nothing about sewing I tried for 2 semesters over two years at the start of high school when it was mandatory. The only thing I remembered was making an N shape when threading the machine if done correctly. And then, I think found that actually the N shape means it is wrong.. as in if you see an N it means NO. I don't remember. Anyway. We started making the curtains 3 weeks ago on Tuesdays while our kids were in daycare. The 2nd Tuesday (week 23 of NIco's life), while making curtains, phone rings and I assume it is my husband calling after his visit to the hospital. I was right. Usually this conversation goes "Just finished at the hospital, he is good. I'll be home about 5" Not that day... "Well, the nurse asked the doctors those questions you asked her and got some answers" "Riiiiiiiight...?" "They think Nico will be on high flow next week. A week or two later he will move to our hospital. 2 or 3 weeks after that he should be home after a night back at the tertiary hospital for his hernia operation" I could have danced around the house for hours but I think I just looked at Friend, told her and we both had tears in our eyes. Then I called my mum. (They were due to arrive in a week and I wasn't sure if this news would delay that) It was surreal. Finally we were close enough, clear enough, big enough, well enough to be given some form of timeline. Whether Nico cooperated or not didn't matter, I knew it was just indicators, but that was enough. Not once in the almost 6 months at the hospital would anyone give us any idea of when we might expect anything to happen. Two days later he tried low flow for the first time. I wasn't told about it in advance, the doctors did their rounds, one of the more senior doctors said "I will just talk to the Fellow and see what he thinks" and 10 minutes later another doctor came back and said he was to go on the low flow for up to 8 hours or for as long as he tolerated. He had a nurse from Adult ICU, Heidi, who I took an immediate dislike to. It's really annoying having someone HOVER around you when your breastfeeding, giving you unsolicited advice you don't need. I'd been feeding him for 2 months and only stopped feeding my daughter 4 or 5 months before he was born, I think I might know a thing or two about it. She was on lunch when the doc came back so I had to wait for her return before he could change over. I told her and she got another nurse to show her what to do. He didn't cope well, his oxygen saturation yo-yo'd between 75 and 86% for about 20 minutes. The other nurses told Heidi he was not tolerating it and she just said "Ok... so when do I know that I should take him off." so they spelt it out " The doctors said to take him off if he is not tolerating. He is not tolerating" Heidi "RIght. But how long long do I give him desaturating. His respiratory rate hasn't changed". One nurse was obviously as fed up as I was with her and snapped " He's desating, he's not tolerating it, you don't wait". I looked at the meter and saw that it was not even set to the level the doctors requested but it was too late to ask them to try with it set correctly. He had been low for long enough. From an outsiders' perspective, this might sound weird, like why did I not tell them to sort him out earlier but 75% is not bad per se, cardiac babies are allowed/ expected sit in high 60's permanently if that is right for them, so it was not that he was in danger or struggling, he just wasn't in the parameters they wanted. So he had a few days rest and on Monday they tried again on Low Flow. He did fine. He never went back to High Flow. I still suspect that on the Thurday the meter was not correct all along... I am possibly just being a cynic.