Day 49--The Last Day in the NICU

Brynn is home! Last night went even better than the first night as Blaine and I tried to work out our "rotations." She slept well between feedings and woke up to eat all of her bottles all day. She even seems to be getting hungry sometimes between feedings and the nurses told us today to transition from such regimented feedings to a more relaxed schedule of "feeding her when she seems hungry." Makes intuitive sense for people bringing home a full-term newborn, but we know we still can't let her go more than 3 hours without eating no matter if she seems hungry or not.

Leaving the NICU was a bit surreal for me. Of course, we had an entirely new nurse today so I was sad that we didn't get to say good-bye to any of the many nurses we have grown to love. Although excitement was clearly the emotion of the day, I was surprised to find myself tearing up a bit as we left the NICU. It had really become our "home away from home" over the last 7 weeks, and we've met some amazing people who've taken great care of Brynn. We'll definitely be sending Christmas cards with pictures of Brynn the "big" girl. Speaking of weight, she weighed in last night before discharge at 4 lb 0 oz. So she made it to the 4 lb mark before coming home.

Now we're beginning a new stage of adapting to newborn life. Riley doesn't come home until tomorrow night so we have a little time to adjust here before we add a 3 1/2 year old to the mix. She says she's very excited to meet her baby sister, but we're not too naive to realize that she'll have some adjustments to make in the days to come. It will feel good to have the whole family together even though I'll likely be pulling my hair out at least once a day. Despite the need to keep Brynn at home as much as possible for a while, we already have two doctors appointments this week. She sees her pediatrician for the first time this week and we have a follow-up eye exam as well.

We can't possibly begin to express how grateful we are for all the support and the thousands of prayers that have been said for Brynn. This has truly been an amazing experience for me--amazingly bad and amazingly good at the same time. I definitely feel like Brynn is the closest thing to a miracle I will experience in my lifetime, and I know that literally hundreds of you have walked this path along with us. I'm planning to print out all the blog entries and comments so that Brynn can read them someday.

I know I'm behind on getting some updated pictures posted, so I'll try to do that for tomorrow's post.