Our First Day Home!

As Clark posted earlier, today we got to bring our little girl home! It’s been an overwhelming  day, more emotionally than anything else, but also the best day. I still can’t believe she’s here. It’s so strange, but in a really good way, to transition her from our baby that’s at the hospital (basically, part time parents) to baby that’s home with us (full time parents!!!!)

So, going back, they told us yesterday (Thursday) that she should be coming home today.   Well, first when we called in the morning Thursday, they said she might be coming home then, but the Dr wanted us to wait another day, so we did.

Here’s the view we would soon be without:

Our little grunty girl (seriously, she loves to grunt/talk/whine/something) has been doing great at eating – and everything else – so they saw no need for her to be medically supervised anymore. Man that was nice to hear, but I tried to not get my hopes up just in case. Four weeks in, so right in the middle of their initial estimates.

Here’s a picture of her last night in the NICU, waving to the camera:

We called and checked this morning and sure enough, she was ready to come home! We got in this morning and every thing we did was the ‘last time’ which was crazy. The last time driving the hospital, the last time going to the third floor, the last time being let into the NICU, and the last picture of Ellie bundled up in her NICU crib:

The Nurse Practitioner (who was there for the delivery, and now the discharge, which was pretty neat) came by and held Ellie while we went over the discharge info. Then the Nurse gave us some free things (diapers, wipes, etc) and told us to take all of the remaining wires off our kid. Now she’s free. I’ve never seen her without wires. It’s kinda crazy. Then we packed her up in the car seat and walked out of the hospital. They actually let us leave, proof in these pics:

I still get overwhelmed thinking about it and she’s been here all day. I sat in the backseat with her all the way home – which is the one part of this whole delivery experience that happened like I planned 🙂

The rest of the day has been a little stressful too. We had our routine before, and we knew where the diapers were, where the wipes were, where she slept, where her bottles came from and more. Today we had to figure that stuff out. I think tomorrow will be a little easier now that we’re starting to establish our new routine.

We also spent part of today finishing picking up stuff off the floor in her room and putting it away. Now that most of that is taken care of, hopefully we can relax a little tomorrow. Sleep when she sleeps. Or watch TV. Or sit on the couch. Hopefully, it’ll look a little something like this:

I’ll keep everyone updated, maybe not daily, but I’ll try to stick close to it. I’m just so glad we’re home and now we can start figuring out how to really be a family of 3. See, I just teared up again. We’re home. We’re so proud of our little girl. And we couldn’t be happier 🙂