And on the Fourth Day...

...we were discharged from the hospital.
No more uncomfortable beds and mediocre food.
No more intrusions to check my blood pressure or vitals that wake up the baby.
Whew!
But...now...
No more:
nurses to give us advice;
food staff to deliver our meals;
pediatrician visits every day;
staff to clean up the room; or
nursery staff to watch and care for Dani if we want to sleep!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

To prepare for the trip home, we had to pick out an outfit. (Love the Dad hand/Baby hand here)

Then, the jacket and carseat for a safe trip:
Home and all tuckered out in the baby papasan:

Glad to be home. Home to the land mines of cat puke and days of mail. Home to the fully-stocked refrigerator with ready to heat and ready to eat meals, sandwiches and salads compliments of Auntie Gail. This was cry-worthy--I ate a salad! Vegetables! Not something we would have had on hand for a while I am sure!

Then the exhaustion hit me. Big Man suggested I go upstairs to sleep. We estimated that during the hospital visit I may have slept for an aggregate of 5 hours. We started the first night with no sleep, and then things calmed down a bit--Big Man was able to rack out for a few hours at a time each day. But lots of other stuff kept me busy--some labs and vitals that were below par meant that I was monitored a lot more than I would have liked to be and I just could not sleep.

By the time I got home, I could barely complete a sentence, because I could not hold a thought together. I crashed for about 20 minutes on the couch and then tried to pump and couldn't get the manual pump to work. Mommy meltdown number 1. (at this point I was probably like an E cup and man it hurt). At this point every part of me feels bad, from my guts to my back to my super swollen ankles.

Big Man insists I lie down upstairs and says he will take all baby responsibility. I go upstairs, shower and get ready for bed (6pm). Climb into bed and sack out for an hour. Need to get up but I can't. Our bed is pretty high--it hurt a bit to climb in, but I definitely can't get out without help. My abs hurt because of the surgery and I resort to yelling for Big Man, who gets me out of bed, and then insists on making up the guest room for me because the bed is about a foot lower and more manageable. Caveat is that he's going to sleep in the bedroom because the bed is bigger. Mommy meltdown 2. (irrational, tired, bleh...the rooms have an adjoining door for pete's sake!).

So, Big Man tucks me into bed and I sleep some more. Probably like 3 more hours and he brings the baby up to the nursery. I wake up again, and he's taking the monitor downstairs so I can continue to sleep and he suggests I use the earplugs so I can sleep undisturbed. He comes up around 11pm and then we come up with the plan that he will keep the monitor in the bedroom, but that we will both wake up for a minute or two with each baby need, to determine whether it's a one man or two man job; feedings are much easier with both of us, for the extra hands but diaper changes are an easy solo job. So we split the time until 4:30am, when we do the last feeding and it's Big Man's turn for some shuteye. So, I take the monitor, shut him in the bedroom, and the blessed little baby gives him 3 hours of shuteye! When he wakes up around 7:30, she's changed and napping, having eaten already, so he cleans up, showers and then heads downstairs with baby so I can do the same.

Then I take over so he can make us a breakfast feast....bacon, real eggs, english muffins, coffee!

All in all, once I got a little bit of sleep it's going well!

Time to get to work on the baby pics for the announcement. Expecting a bunch of visitors over the next few days too!

Happy to be home, with my family.

I'm so in love x2.