Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

The girls are coming home! Yes, Sunday, as in TOMORROW — Sunday, January 18, 2009! Exactly six weeks from their birthday!

This week has been great for the girls, they have made significant advances that all point to discharge. They have been maintaining their own temperature successfully outside of the isolettes and taking all of their feeds from bottles, all while continuing to gain weight. They are both over 5 pounds now. ML and I have been working diligently to become familiarized with the care necessary to continue this progress at home. We are happy to say we have the confidence needed to start parenting them full time. They really are like babies now, no longer little hospital patients!

The groceries have been stocked up, the nursery is clean and ready for arrival. We have had the car seats installed and inspected by the police. We took an infant CPR class. We watched instructional videos at the hospital about RSV, SIDS and other acronyms important for babies’ health (go look those up if you are so interested). We know how to feed and diaper them, swaddle them, bathe them. We know their body language and what cues to look for when there is a problem. We have the numbers to poison control and the pediatrician handy. We have follow-up appointments scheduled to see the pediatrician and several specialists over the next weeks and months. We even have a visiting nurse service coming out to the house during the first week to check on us.

We have known since about Tuesday this week that the discharge was going to happen this weekend, but we didn’t dare speak of it until we knew for sure. Then even after we knew for sure, we waited some more to tell everyone because it didn’t seem like it was really happening! But then, yesterday it just kind of occurred to me that we are about as ready as we will ever be.  Having six weeks to prepare for the imminent arrival of tiny premature babies really puts a person into super checklist mode. I doubt we would have done anything near this level of preparation if we hadn’t been through the ringer with this whole hospital experience. I hope we are better parents for it! If anything it was a good outlet for all of that nervous energy.

I remember the night after I gave birth, I barely slept at all. I was so excited – like I was a kid on Christmas Eve all over again. (Or it could have been the mega-dose of narcotics I was on, but anyway.) I wonder if tonight will be similar in anticipation, excitement and sheer terror for what we are about to embark on at home. But I can’t wait, nonetheless.  I can’t wait to start the next chapter of our story – the Book of Lang has just begun!!