Coming Home from the Hopsital

Sharon was discharged from Edwards Hospital on Thursday. All of the photos from the day are here. It was a trying day because Edwards was packed with new mommies and babies. The masseuse who walks around the floors offering neck massages to the new mommies (none for new daddies?) gave us the scoop. Edwards had to open up a seldom-used third floor of Labor and Delivery, and there were so any babies they had to keep the extra ones in a recover room as a make-shift nursery. At one point I saw 17 babies in the nursery on our floor alone.

All of the patients meant that we spent a lot of time waiting to see certain people that we had to speak with before Sharon was discharged. Waiting for the nutritionist, the lactation consultant, the "going home" nurse, ect; sometimes for an hour or more. However, we finally were able to leave around 3PM. Luckily, Sharon's father has Thursdays off, so he was able to help us carry everything out. We knew that Evie would have to stay in the NICU so we were going home without her. It was difficult getting ready to leave without her, but we knew deep-down it was best for her (but it didn't make it any easier).

Sharon had packed some "going home" outfits for the twins in her hospital bag. We knew it was going to be chilly during the week, so she packed two of the "just born" sized sleepers. Unfortunately, Gavin's definition of a "just born" size differed from the manufacturers. As you can see in the picture, he is swimming in that thing! His arms barely reached into the sleeves and I could've put both legs into one of the sleeper legs and there would've been room to spare! But, it was the only thing we had, so we had to make do.

Next came his first ride in the car seat. As you can see, he's being swallowed up by the car seat as well. He's just a head and padding. You can also see how long floppy the arms of the sleeper are on him.

On our way out of the hospital we paid one last visit to little Evie, was soundly sleeping. There are a few more shots of Evie in the day's photo set here.

This was the first time the twins were reunited since birth, four days earlier, and the first time Sharon had ever seen them both together at the same time. I wonder if they miss each other?

The ride home was uneventful, and soon Gavin was at home in his "Pack 'n Play." He looks like a little baby burrito, all wrapped up!

Sharon was very happy to be back in the comfort of her own home, rather than the rather uncomfortable hospital bed (which, in the opinion of the aforementioned masseuse, "sucked.").

Gavin awoke to his new home a little while later and was in a very playful mood. There are several more adorable shots of Gavin in the day's photo set here!

Here he is practicing for American Idol.

They say babies can only communicate through crying at this stage of their lives, but I beg to differ. Only four days old and he's already mastered the universal language. Now he's all set to drive on the Dan Ryan. I just hope he doesn't repeat it when we take the "baby sign language" class.

Sure, he looks cute here, but it would be quite a first night for us as parents. Little did we know that babies who sleep all day are up all night. For the last four days he's been spending the night in the hospital's nursery, so we had no idea what his schedule was. We had read newborns sleep up to 18 hours a day, and so we figured all of this daytime sleeping would be accompanied by a lot of nighttime sleeping. Boy, were we in for a surprise. He was basically up all night, but we made it through to the morning.