A Frickalicious Blog: December 2013

74 days later. And Henry and Jameson are home.

Henry actually got his clearance a week ago while Jameson just got his walking papers today. Surprisingly, having Henry home this week seemed relatively easy, at least compared to our expectations based on our room-in at the hospital. The biggest challenge was the energy it took to still drive the 45 minutes over to the hospital to visit Jameson. Henry was getting solid blocks of 3-4 hours of sleep at night and was eating well and without incident. We’ll see whether it’s twice or exponentially as hard with Jameson at home tonight

It’s been an amazing journey and it was with a broad swath of feelings that we walked out of the NICU today. Definitely some misty eyes. We said goodbye to a couple of our favorite nurses, Christine and Kathleen, took a few photos, and walked out the door for hopefully the last time. Raechel and I have had a lot of time to process our thoughts and feelings as we’ve gone through the whole experience. The highs and lows have been as high and as low as any we’ve experienced. The false starts were mentally traumatic. The times when they would achieve a first, be it removal of their incubator or NG tube, or when we first got to hold them, were moments we will remember forever. Ultimately, I think the main point is that it was always in the hands of Henry and Jameson. You could say it was a lesson in parenting that while we want to protect and do everything for them, we have limited control. I’m sure we’ll get a few more lessons on that over the years.

And the other thing that will stick with us is everyone’s support, through email, phone, text, and in-person. It has been invaluable to getting us to this point. So with all sincerity, we say thank you.

We’ve utilized this blog over time to update on major life events. While I’m certain we’ll post periodically through time, our frequency will certainly decline as we turn all of our energy and time to raising Henry and Jameson. In our home :)