Home Sweet Home

Well we are back at home, finally.

What a whirlwind couple of weeks! I can't believe Taylor is 2 weeks old and has basically spent the majority of his life in the hospital. I can't believe that we are now the parents of TWO kids, which as evidence of last night is going to take some adjustment to get used to (what a juggling act!).

They released me from the hospital a little after 1:30pm yesterday, and we went straight up to Camano Island to pick up Preston from my parents house. We were both excited to see him. When we drove up to their house, he was across the street (with Grandpa) playing with the neighbor kids. He saw our car and got this huge smile on his face and started running towards us. It was really nice to see that he missed us too. :)

It was actually very exciting to step outside the hospital doors. I really felt like I was getting released from prison or something - haha. The fresh air was wonderful and I was in amazement of all that went on in the "real world" outside the hospital.

Not that we wanted to document the experience at all, but Monday night when Will went home to get some clean clothes and supplies for us, he picked up our camera as well. Here just a few shots that we took while in the hospital the past few days...Luckily you won't be seeing any photos of me at my worst here, though the one is not great either. But at least I'm not in a hospital gown with IV's in my arm drugged up on Magenesium Sulfate.

Will and Taylor getting some snuggle time in....

Me thinking "I'm only taking this photo to document that I was here. That's it."

Our little bundle of joy taking a snoozer in the hospital bassinet....

We returned home to find everything exactly the same as we left it the night we headed into the E.R.

The first thing I did was clean up my make-shift bed out in the living room since I wouldn't be needing to sleep upright anymore. Anything that reminds me of last Thursday night I want to throw out or put away. In fact, I want to completely re-arrange our furniture now to feel fresh. Will isn't excited about that idea though.

This is my left arm this morning. They took my IV out yesterday, which had been there for almost 6 days. I guess they normally only last 72 hours and then they have to replace it, and so since mine lasted so long I have this huge hole in my arm where it used to be. It's actually quite sore to bend right now.

I weighed myself this morning, and I lost 22 pounds during the 6 days in the hospital. That is actually what I should have lost after delivery anyway, but didn't because of the water weight and pre-eclampsia. So it's REALLY nice to have all of that water weight off of me, and I'm sure I probably lost some fat as well since I wasn't eating hardly anything but liquids - I'm sure my body was taking from my fat stores in order to feed Taylor.

Last night was our first night as a family. Alone.

Tessha (Will's older sister) stayed with us for the last 2 weeks of my pregnancy to help me. Then my mom was here the week after Taylor was born. And then we were in the hospital for a week.

So it's been 4 weeks since we were at home by ourselves as a family without anyone here to help. I dare say it was an interesting first night...

Taylor fell asleep in the bouncy chair in the bathroom while Preston took a bath...

After Preston's bath (and several temper tantrums), we got him settled into bed for the night. Afterwhich we sat down to relax for a bit and talked about going to bed when we realized we still had another child asleep in the bathroom!

Crazy how we forgot about Taylor sleeping in his bouncy chair. Being at home again, we just did our usual bedtime routine with Preston because that is what is habit for us.

Taylor got a tad bit spoiled while in the hospital because I would sleep with him on my chest a lot and hold him. So now he wants to be held to go to sleep. Last night he woke up about every 2 hours, not because he wanted to eat or because he was poopy but just because he wanted to be held. As soon as I would pick him up, he'd be fine.

One of those times he woke up, he did a high pitched little scream and woke Preston up and we were hearing cries from both bedrooms and were going "Okay....this is new and different."

This morning Preston woke up bright and early at 6:30 a.m. crying for Grandpa, so Will went in there and spent an hour trying to get him back to sleep. Meanwhile Taylor woke up in our room and I brought him into bed with me to eat and fall back asleep. Only he slept and I didn't, because I'm always too afraid that my arm will fall onto him and squish him or I'll roll over onto him.

Hopefully the transition period for our new little family will get better and everyone will start feeling like life is returning to normal here again soon.

In the meantime, I've got to figure out how to acclimate slowly back to normal food and a lowfat diet for the next 6 weeks or so. The GI doctor hopes that this was all just a post pardum issue and that it will be resolved by my 6 week appointment. In the meantime though, I'm on bloodpressure medicine and eating an extremely lowfat diet so that it won't flare up my pancreas again.

Anyway, it's good to be home again. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers during this.