Happy 5 Month Birthday Brodie

Hope that everyone had a great New Year's.  Things have been going great with us except for we are exhausted more than we have ever been.  Between taking care of Brodie, doctor's appts, no night nurses and visitors we have been running on empty and don't know when we will get the proper rest.  The nursing is getting much better but because of the holidays it was tough to get steady nursing.  Around the New Year's there were three straight nights that we did not have nurses.  It is hard to sleep when you don't have a nurse so we bring everyone out to the living room and just sleep there.  We are afraid since we are so tired that we will sleep through the vent or monitor going off.   Brodie has been doing great lately.  He had a developmental appt and the doctor said that after reading his chart he couldn't believe that the baby sitting in his office was the same one.  He is anywhere from 2-4 months developmentally but they are pleased with his progress after all he has been through.  The only issue he saw was that he is bring his hands together but not tracking his eyes like he should.  The doctor said that almost always the tracking comes before bringing you hands together.  So now we get to add ophthamologist to our appts.  After that we went to see an ENT because he sporadically coughs up blood through his trach.  They looked down his trach and saw nothing so they got concerned that he had blood in his lungs.  We were then sent to the emergency room and stayed there for 6 or 7 hours.  After doing a bunch of tests they think that he is ok and we just need to keep an eye on it.  We see our regular ENT on Tuesday so we will keep you updated.  We went to the Texans playoff game yesterday.  It was the first day that we have both been able to leave the house at the same time.  We had our nurse and sister-in-law (Thanks Leslie) stay with him.  We all had a great time and Bradie really enjoyed himself.  We can't tell you how great it is to have Brodie home and we are enjoying our family at home together.  We are having difficulties getting a routine together but it will come together soon.  The newspaper came and did an interview about Brodie and our family so we are really excited that we will be able to educate people on CDH.  Someone saw our blog and has contacted us from the PR department at Texas Children's to help us make people aware of CDH.  Thanks to all of you for reading our blog and keeping up with Brodie.  We look forward to continued good news and hope that in a few months we can start talking about closing up the trach.