Every morning while Malcolm was in the NICU I would call to see how he was doing, how he had done through the night, if they knew anything new, etc. On the morning of April 6th, I called when I woke up and they told me that the doctor had not been around to see him yet, but they were starting their rounds in just a few minutes. The nurse wasn't sure if we would be able to bring him home that day or not, and we would have to hear from the doctor once she had seen him. With a prayer in my heart, and my fingers crossed, I set out to get my family breakfast and ready to go. About 20 minutes after I had talked to the nurse, the Doctor called and said that everything looked fine, all their tests came back negative or normal, and there was no reason they could find why Malcolm had spots. She also saw no reason to keep him in the NICU, and we could bring him home as long as he passed his carseat test! There was a lot of smiles, singing, and dancing in our house after that call. As soon as breakfast was over, we dropped Molly off at Tim's house to play with Madeline, and we headed over to the hospital.
The carseat test was 90 minutes long, and all he had to do was keep his oxygen levels up the whole time. That 90 minutes seemed to last forever. We were so close to getting our little guy home with us! The doctor came and chatted with us for a few minutes, just to keep us updated on all the tests and things, and to actually meet us. Our nurse could see how anxious we were to get our boy home, so she did the whole check-out process with us while we were waiting that last unbearably long 20 minutes. We had some of the most amazing NICU nurses. They were kind and courteous, and very empathetic. We had had this nurse a few times in the 4 days we had been there. She sat with us and watched the seconds tick down for that last couple of minutes. She walked us out to our car (which I'm sure is standard procedure, but I was still glad she did). We hugged, we laughed, and she wished us good luck. Then we were on our way!
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| Happy to be home! |
At first, Molly wasn't quite sure what to think of him. She was very gentle with him. We had worked with her on that before he got here. She liked him well enough as long as he wasn't being held or fed. If TR or I would hold him, she would start crying. The second day holding him wasn't so bad, but she didn't like me to feed him. By the third morning she was just as much in love with him as we were.
After she realized that she really did love him, we had to keep a very close eye on her to make sure she didn't love him TOO much. She is such a big helper though! She would bring me his bottle, and when he would cry she would try to put his binki in his mouth (backwards, but it was the effort that I appreciated). She even found her old binkis to show him how it was done. It wasn't uncommon to hear exclamations of "Hey Cute Boy!" around our house, even if he wasn't anywhere near her, but she could hear him.
For how new he is, he is really alert. I love those eyes.
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| So squishy!! |
Looking back on how little Molly was. She was almost a pound and a half smaller than he was a birth, and she didn't gain any weight for her first month and a half. It's amazing to me now that she was so little. She's getting to be such a big, happy, spunky, amazing girl.
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| I love my kids! |
