The 1st week

All I can say about the first week is thank goodness for grandparents! :)

We arrived home later than expected on Monday afternoon. Noah hated the car journey and was quite grumpy by the time we arrived home. He had been breathing without his machine for most of the day so we thought we would put him on his machine for a rest once we had set everything up. We eventually worked out that our nurse had changed all the hoses on all the machines while we were busy packing at the Ronald McDonald, so that we had nice clean ones. A nice thought but we found out that we had leakages and it took us a while to work out where. We weren't very stressed at all!
Noah's night machine decided to work as a steam machine, which loosened Noah's phlegm (slijm) very nicely. So we had 0.005 seconds to suction him when he woke up before he sounded like he was drowning. We maintained our composure throughout!
The front room, the hallway, our bedroom, Noah's bedroom and the bathroom looked like an explosion in a medical supply warehouse. We had great ideas of getting organised but then came 'The Pampers Problem'.

Noah loves being home but the change gave him diarrhea - who knew there was such a difference between Rotterdam water and Den Haag water?! So we would no sooner get him washed, changed and dressed when a large trumpeting sound would signal our need to start again. Undress, wipe, change pampers, "PaaAAAAARRRRPPPP", wipe, change pampers, dress. "PaaAAAAARRRRPPPP", undress, wipe, change pampers, "PaaAAAAARRRRPPPP", wipe, change pampers ... and so on and repeat! It was time to phone for the cavelry!

Chris and Lex came to the rescue and we were so relieved to see them. They went to the Ikea to buy some storage for us. Lex helped Thijs to put it all together and then Thijs even managed to do a massive shop, so not only did we have some food in the house at last but we also had replenished stock of Pampers! Chris looked after Noah while I managed to cook some meals for the freezer. Finally some order is restored.

Since then it's been a lot better. We're still busy with the Pampers and we found that 2.5 hours isn't long enough to get us and Noah ready to leave the house and get to the doctors on time! But still it's all good . He's home and we love it!

Noah spends most of his day playing, sleeping and pooping just like a regular guy. Apart from the diarrhea he's still happy and doing well off his breathing machines. You can tell that it's all a bit tireing for him, but he's very relaxed and loving being home. He even ate a full bowl of food, which was unheard of in the hospital. We sit him in the corner of the couch when we have our breakfast and lunch so he has seen us eating. This obviously payed off.

Lilo hasn't really paid much attention to Noah. She's had a good sniff of him and licked his hand. She sleeps beneath the couch where Noah is sitting so it seems to be going well.

As you can imagine we haven't taken very many photos - hands are busy with pamper changing, but we will try and take some in the next few days and post you some home photos.

Thanks for all the fabulous cards, and a big shout out to the Drostens for the fabulous home decorations. Fantastic, it really made it a welcome home. Thanks also to Hans, Marloes, and the ICK1 team at Sophia for helping us out through this Pampers Problem, it was great to have you on the end of the phone to answer all our questions.

xxx The Drosten juniors.