RSS feedMolly came home yesterday (Thursday) at around 2pm. Yay!
We had about 4-5 hours sleep the night before, getting up around 8am. We didn’t get the bottles and other bits and pieces on the Wednesday, and typically for us, we actually bought the wrong food. I mean, it’s not like we bought chicken chunks in jelly, when she prefers tuna strips in brine, no, we bought the formula the hospital uses, but for full terms, not preterms. So knowing we’d have to feed her around 3pm, we had to exchange the formula and buy the bottles before we got to the hospital.
The formula exchange went fine. But when we got to the chemist… they were out of bottles. Great, we were about to be the primary care givers for a newborn, and we had no way to feed her. There’s something to be said about having a spare rubber device or two around the home, because you never know when it might come in handy. The chemist said they’d be getting more bottles in around midday, so that meant we could probably pick up Molly and then pick up the bottles from Marrickville Metro on the way home. Assuming of course that the bottles would arrive when they said they would.
We turned up at the hospital at 10:45am. The only thing we’d heard so far was that one “she may be able to go home tomorrow”, so I tried not to get too committed to the idea until it actually happened. Louise was more convinced, and none of my “let’s just see what happens, no expectations” type lines would sway her, she just knew Molly was coming home.
When we walked in, everything fell into place. The nurses all assumed she was going home, and had already done most of the work required to make that happen. They’d also done the 11am cares for some reason, which was a shame, because we were looking forward to doing the last one, but no matter.
By midday we were pretty much ready to go. The doctor came around for the final discharge check up, which Molly pretty much slept through because it was under the nice warm bath lights. The final step consists of the doctor shining a light into her eyes and checking for a reaction. Well, Molly wasn’t having any of that, and kept her eyes firmly closed. Then the doctor got paged, and said if she didn’t open her eyes in the next minute, she’d have to leave and Molly would have to stay until later in the day. The three us rubbed hands, her legs, her tummy, her cheeks, nothing worked… then finally humming Moby Dick by Led Zeppelin saved the day, and she open each eye slightly to see where daddy was. Eat that Teddy Bears, John Bonham moonlights as a doctors assistant.
We had to return all the hospital clothes and linen, so we dressed her in a pink singlet from Louise’s mum, a cute little white with pink spots jump suit, the only clothes we own that fit her, from one of my aunties, and wrapped in the same wrap that my grandmother knitted for me when I came home from the hospital. The latest lot of photos show everything off.
We wheeled her cot out into the main part of RPA, and then outside for the very first time, in the RPA emergency drop off, we’d parked the car.
It was a little embarrassing, because I didn’t know how to properly use the car seat, or even if it was OK for a premmie, but the nurse was great and knew hot to strap her in. Originally we thought we’d have to pick her up in the pram, so it was sitting in the boot, waiting for for dad who knows nothing about prams or strollers, to have to pull it out and somehow nonchalantly expand it (from it’s portable collapsed state) into an actual stroller. Luckily we didn’t actually need it.
So we finally left the hospital, and stopped off at Metro on the way home. I’d love to say we left her in the car while we went shopping, but some of the family may not see the funny side. No, I sat with Molly with a window slightly down, while Louise went and got the bottles, a final cone, and strangely enough, a pie with sauce. Molly’s mum is a bit of a nut job at times. I hope she’s getting most of it from me.
As I write this, we’ve had our first 32 hours at home, and this the first moment I’ve had to blog. I’ll hopefully cover those initial 24 hours tomorrow, once I’ve had a little sleep. Or does this just go on for 18 years now?