I'm a real mommy

Finally, after eight weeks I have one at home. Ben was released Friday afternoon! I'm not sure what I thought was going to happen, but it was very uneventful. Verify he is my baby, sign some papers, pull off his monitors, and that was it. We didn't leave until several hours later, so it was dark outside, quiet, a non-event to everyone else. But of course it was huge to us. The final result of years of hoping, praying, and waiting. It felt pretty darn good to walk through those doors with Ben in my hands.

I was a maniac with the video camera. I recorded him getting buckled in his carseat, walking out of the room, getting on the elevator, walking through the lobby, getting put in the car, getting out of the car and walking in the door at the house. I would have taped the car ride if it wasn't dark. This is probably a very bad sign of things to come!

As good as it was to bring Ben with us, Friday night was the first time I cried at leaving the others. Splitting them up is miserable every day we do it. Hopefully it won't happen many more times before the others are able to come home.

Delia and Michael are slowly getting better with their feedings, both are attempting to bottle about 6 times a day (out of 8). Michael has taken several full bottles, and Delia is averaging about 1/2 of her volume most times. The doctors aren't worried about them, they just feel that more time is needed to build up stamina. The therapy team is watching them closely too so that we are sure reflux issues aren't being missed. We are hoping they will be coming home within a week, maybe two at the most, depending on how quickly they start to pick up. It sure didn't take Ben very long to get the hang of it once he started going good!

Another very sad thing about leaving the hospital is leaving all our wonderful nurses. I didn't realize how close I had become with some of them until I realized we might not be having some of the weekend girls again. They've been my companions and support these past weeks, especially all the hours I spent at the hospital by myself. Without their positive encouragement I surely woudl have quit breastfeeding by now, and would be in a much different place with my attitude. Every time I would start to worry about the kids or about myself, feel like I was doing something wrong, or have what I felt like a dumb question, they were there to make me feel better, to tell me I was doing fine and that my question was not dumb. They've been patient with my inability to remember the names of medicines and technical terms - I compared some special formula to eating dry Ramen noodles the other day, and referred to a laxative as Colon Blow. And they have been good to my kids. Until we split them up a few days ago, I didn't really have trouble leaving the hospital without the babies. I knew they were in excellent hands and that I had nothing to worry about while I was gone. I would have struggled much more if we had a different team of primary nurses.

Hopefully we'll be able to keep in touch after everyone is gone from the hospital, I think they have become quite attached to the babies and will want to see them grow up over these next few months. Melissa even made us an adorable cake as a going away present, it was the sweetest thing ever! Figuratively and literally, buttercream and chocolate cake with a fudge filling. And our weekend night nurses have "shared custody" of the babies and have to rotate weekends since they always work the same nights. I've been told that the nurses don't fight over patients very much, so I think we might be a little bit special. I hope they have enjoyed having us as patients as much as we've enjoyed and appreciated their care.

I have no idea why this didn't occur to me earlier, but for some reason the other day it just hit me that without these nurses and doctors, the babies wouldn't have made it. Even though we didn't have any real problems other than being small and immature, without breathing and eating help, the babies couldn't function. Thank God I didn't let that cross my mind while we were living it, I would have (and maybe should have) been much more scared than I ever was. I guess I was so caught up in the excitement of them being born and the lack of new problems that I didn't have time to think about how serious their existing problems were. How is it that when we are living through things, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but when we look back and reflect we say how the hell did I survive?

One hour to sleep before the next feeding. Should probably do that instead of goof off on the internet. Good night:)