Finally Home!!!

So, Isaac is 18 days old today, and he is finally home. They let us bring him home from the hospital tonight just before dinnertime. He had his surgery on Thursday to remove the tubes from his nose, and everything went well with that. He seems to be doing great now. We didn’t expect that he would be discharged from the hospital today – we thought they might let us bring him home early next week, but they said that he was doing well and there was no reason to keep him longer. He will have some follow-up appointments with the pediatrician and with the ENT who did his surgery next week. He came home without any monitors (up until yesterday the nurses were talking about sending him home with an apnea monitor), and it is nice to hold him and not worry about any wires or IVs connected to him. The nurses have mentioned that he has been awake a lot at night, so we’ll see how long it takes before he gets his days and nights straight again. But it was nice that they happened to have the same kind of baby swing at the NICU as the one we own, so we know that he likes to sleep in his swing already, if he needs any extra help with the sleeping at night.

The boys are excited to have him home. Kolby and Eli both took turns holding him (after we talked about washing their hands each time before touching the baby). And Camden touched his hair a few times and kind of petted his head. I am curious to see how Camden will adjust to having a new baby – but I think I will need to give it a while to let everything get back to normal before we can tell if he is going to be jealous at all or not. Camden has had a pretty rough time with me being gone everyday for the last few weeks – he has been more fussy than normal most days, so hopefully he will return to his normal, happy self soon now that we are all going to have a lot more time together at home.

This evening, after dinner, I picked him up and held him for a little while before nursing him. I just sat on the couch while he ate – I didn’t need to weigh him before and after he ate to measure exactly how many milliliters he ate or have a lactation specialist or nurse watching to see how well he latched on – and then after he finished, I laid down on the couch and just held him sleeping for a little while. This is how it should be to have a new baby.

Thank you to all of you who have helped watch our kids for us, brought us meals, called us, visited, and kept us in your prayers through all this. We really appreciate it! We probably won’t be taking Isaac out much for a while, because we really want to avoid him getting sick this winter. But I will be sure to post some more photos of him sometime soon.