Home!

We're home!!! The Roulston Clan is officially home at Casa Roulston, together at long last. The last 48 hours have been a blur and it's hard to believe that after 9 weeks - 64 days - in the hospital it's all come down to this. Jay and Leo hanging out on the couch right now while I type away on the computer nearby. The dogs are hanging out on the couch too, snuggling beside Dad. And Leo has already slept comfortably in his crib this afternoon, taken two full feedings and one of his many lighter "med" feedings - that's when we essentially force feed a little extra milk disguising a myriad of medications that he's still on and will be for at least another month.

We already made it through our first "oh my god" moment when we took his temperature after coming home and let's just say he wasn't warm. So we bundled him up in a double swaddle (see below pictures), a hat and cranked up the heat in the house. A couple of hours later he was back in the safe zone. Phew. And I have to say, this is when I'm thankful that our house is so small. Because I can just lean into the hallway from the kitchen and see that he's breathing OK in his crib. Really we're never more than about 5 steps from confirming that he's OK. And this is good for our sanity.

We're trying to get the hang of all of his medications and how best to give them to him especially when he's not yet on a fixed feeding schedule AND when the dosing times don't line up with when he's been eating. Awesome. But we're figuring it out, and the little mini-feeds a couple of times a day seem to be working.

I will say, however, that the rooming in experience and the discharge experience were not quite as joyous as maybe we had hoped. The rooming in experience was really fine, we didn't sleep much but we managed to get a tiny bit of sleep. Leo did really well for us so there wasn't much going on other than us trying to learn how and when to feed him. But our nurse was brand new to Leo so there were definite gaps in understanding in terms of what his patterns are, etc. Combine misunderstandings with no sleep and you get lots of frustration. But nothing major, just annoying. Discharge was another story. I don't know why hospitals are so bad at this! For all that they do so well, discharge I think is universally a bad experience. You have to wait around forever - either for a doctor or the pharmacy or whatever. In our case all of the above. And a slight emotional breakdown on my part when the pharmacy claimed the insurance company was telling them that Leo wasn't on my policy. So I proceed to try to find my insurance company's phone number after I had left my card with the pharmacy so they could call them back to double-check - but of course I was oging to double-check too because I didn't trust the pharmacy chick. Sigh. It was, as usual, a misunderstanding on the part of the pharmacy. Turns out Leo has a name and it isn't "Baby Boy Roulston." Well at least we know that my insurance company is vigilant about fraud!

And after that we were out the door around Noon...oh wait I forgot my breast milk in the freezer! So I run back upstairs while Jay takes the car out of the parking garage and I load up a huge shopping bag with all of my frozen milk and hope that it doesn't start to thaw on the ride home. It didn't. And I always forget something. Always.

Then it was home where our loyal and loving pooches were patiently waiting for someone to let them out since it had been since yesterday at about 8 p.m. when they last were let outside by our wonderful neighbor. Poor guys. They didn't miss a beat and showered us with love regardless of our abandonment. Then they proceeded to be very sweet and gentle with Leo. Jay held Leo while letting the boys sniff the bottom of him all swaddled up. They sat and stayed on command and came in to check on this new creature Mom was fussing over in the crib. Henry has long claimed the guest bed in that room as his own and I don't think anything's going to change that. He will now simply be keeping an eye on Leo for us while he snoozes across the room.

So we're settling in fine it would seem. I'm sure there will be scary moments ahead and sleepless nights...many sleepless nights. But so far so good and Leo is doing tremendously well and seems at ease in his new surroundings.

So now it seems this blog switches to a plain old boring parenting blog! But hopefully will still provide some laughs for folks. And we'll be sure to chart Leo's progress here as well. Thanks to everyone for your ongoing love and support. We could not have gotten through these last two months without it and that is NOT overstating things. We feel incredibly lucky and grateful. Oh, and Leo just said Hi.