Our night nurse arrived at ten last night and we were in bed by 10:25 pm. She left at eight this morning. We crawled out of bed at 7:36 am. Nine hours of sleep. Rich and I both needed it. Nine hours is a good night of sleep for parents of a two year old. It is a very good, rarely experienced night sleep for parents of a trached two year old. It means everything that possibly could have gone wrong went right instead. It means a nurse was on duty. It means the room air compressor, oxygen concentrator, pulse oximetry, heated humidity, and feeding pump - the machines Nathaniel requires at night - worked properly. It means Nathaniel settled back into sleep with a few pats on the bottom or by repositioning himself after waking. It means the night went as we had planned and prayed.

We plan to hibernate on Friday nights weekly.

I write so much about Nathaniel's communication needs, that I have not put into writing the other areas of development that we are addressing in therapy. There are many. Nathaniel continues to have a global developmental delay and some significant sensory processing needs. He has consistently received Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy in addition to his twice weekly Speech Therapy.  We had a long day of appointments at St. Louis Children's earlier this month and the collective decision was to start some new weekly therapy there to address some of the sensory needs. We go tomorrow for our first visit, which increases OT to twice a week now. We are putting PT on hold for a time to allow for the extra focus on OT.

Calling 911 brings help, right? For most of my life I have understood that to be true. Growing up in a small Ohio vacation town as the daughter of a police officer and volunteer firefighter I was familiar with the world of emergencies. Multiple summer mornings I woke to the scanner tones and heard the dispatch give our address as the location of the call. The first few times it happened I flew out of bed in a panicked pursuit of a stricken family member only to learn it was someone at our front door looking for help. Symptoms of a heart attack. A fishhook caught in an arm. Heat stroke. A Lake Erie rock thrown at the back of a head. Our porch steps were an open triage unit if the police car was parked in front of the house. If my step-father called for additional help and a transport to the hospital, our small yard filled with black cases of medical equipment, a gurney, and the guys who graduated high school a couple years ahead of me who were now volunteering. 911 called. Help arrived.

That paradigm might have been turned completely upside down on Nathaniel’s first night home.