Adjustment

With the oxygen has come a lot of new developments in our lives, and since last night we've been hard at work adapting to our new situation.

We've been through a lot since last weekend, but I think the hardest part of all of this was having to "break up" with our nanny. I called our nannyshare partner family last night as soon as we realized that he was going to have to be on oxygen 24 hours, and broke down sobbing on the phone. I let them break the news to Lilian, our nanny, but called her myself this afternoon, and of course broke down sobbing again. Tomorrow morning we are going over there to say goodbye, and I think it's pretty safe to say that there will be a lot more sobbing. It's a cliche to say that your nanny is like a member of your family, but it's really true. Magnus's love for Lilian was obvious from the way he would start bouncing up and down in my arms after I would ring the doorbell while we waited for her to answer the door. And then she would appear, and he would absolutely beam with happiness to see her. Realistically, I know that part of that is just that he is a very happy and loving kid by nature and he will probably become equally attached to whoever cares for him next, but I know she really loves him, too. And yeah, of course the tears are streaming down my face again as I write this.

We talked about the possibility of her still babysitting for us sometimes, but realistically, there is a language barrier and I don't think we can surmount it enough for her to operate his equipment. Still, I hope we will somehow continue to see her. Maybe someday things will even work out so that she can care for him again.

So during the times today when I wasn't breaking down in tears about having to leave our wonderful nanny, I was scrambling to find a new nanny, and spoke to a couple of promising candidates on the phone and set up some in-person interviews over the weekend. I've also been scrambling to catch up on work, and Iggy has stepped in as super-dad, basically cancelling all his appointments and giving up his work to care for Magnus while we try to find new childcare. Luckily, my parents are coming next week for a brief visit so that gives us a little extra time, and hopefully we'll get everything worked out by Thanksgiving.

With everything going on, another thing we've had to give up on is that we were hoping to go back East for Christmas, but now we're just going to stay here. I mentioned before that the doctor who did Magnus's cath wanted to do his followup cath after the holidays, but then I talked to our cardiologist who wants it done before the holidays. I'm not sure who will win out, or when we'll know, but between that uncertainty and the challenge of trying to fly with a baby who is on oxygen during the holiday rush, it just didn't seem tenable. I think Iggy's mom is planning to come out for Christmas, which would be great, but there are a lot of other relatives we'll miss seeing. Luckily, Magnus is too young to know when Christmas is anyway, so we'll just have to celebrate "Christmas" with the rest of the family the next time we see them.

As far as Magnus is concerned, I guess our first 24 hours on home oxygen haven't been too bad. Dealing with him being tethered to the compressor is somewhat reminiscent of trying to vacuum the house while minimizing the number of times I have to unplug and replug the vacuum cleaner, a challenge with which I am quite familiar. I guess this is one time that having a small house works in our favor! One of the worst things about the compressor, though, is that it's really loud, and of course we have to run it 24 hours a day. Luckily, we can leave it out in the hallway and then shut the door to Magnus's bedroom while he's sleeping which mutes the sound significantly, but the only other rooms in our house that have doors on them are the bathroom and our bedroom, so it's loud everywhere else. But I guess we'll get used to it. Magnus did get fussy and pulled his cannula off a few times, but he didn't seem to be too traumatized by it. The next thing we really have to do is to try to find a stroller that has a big enough basket to hold our portable oxygen tank so that we can take him out for more than a couple of hours at a time. We really want to make sure that his world doesn't get to be too circumscribed now that he's on oxygen and it's harder to take him out.