Bringing Baby Home

This morning while I was in the bathroom Dr. Horger came into the room and I heard him wake Marshall up by saying, "Do you want to go home today?" Yes!! Yes we do! When I came out of the bathroom he started telling me how Ronan's bilirubin levels continued to go down throughout the night so he was sending us home and we would go to his office to see him tomorrow and make sure he was still doing well. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. As soon as Dr. Horger left, Marshall and I started texting and calling everyone to tell them we were going home and I hopped in the shower to get ready to leave. Marshall started packing up the room while I showered and once I was out he started taking things down to the car. We were ready to go and had Ronan dressed in his going home outfit by the time they finally came in with his discharge papers. They made me ride down in a wheelchair and I had to hold Ronan.

It felt so good to watch Marshall put him in the carseat and for us to drive away from that hospital with our baby. We had waited a year to do this. Last year this time I cried as we drove away from the hospital empty handed. Now I was finally taking a baby home. For a year I wondered if this day would ever come, if we would be so lucky and now here it is. Marshall decided to take the scenic route home to show the boy the city he now lived in. It was nice seeing how I hadn't been outside the hospital walls in 5 days. We decided to stop at PT's on the way home and pick up some lunch for ourselves and Marshall's mom who was waiting at our house for us to arrive. We decided to all go inside and wait for the lunch to be ready and I ended up running into a professor from UNCW that I knew. He hugged us both and told us how very happy he was for us and said Ronan was just beautiful.

I felt a sigh of relief come over me when we walked into our house with Ronan. We finally had our baby home. When Marshall sat him down in his carseat, JoJo immediately came over to check him out. Marshall had brought several blankets home during the week for JoJo to smell so she could get used to Ronan's scent. She sniffed him a little and licked him and then went on her way. It will be interesting to see how she is with him as time goes by. Shortly after we got home, my friend Dawn arrived with the largest stuffed monkey you have ever seen. She had wanted to wait until we were home to come see the baby knowing that our stay at the hospital would be crazy and we would be inundated with visitors. She got to hold him and spend some of his first few minutes at home with him.