Ready to GO!

It's 5 am and I have been awake for a couple of hours now. After an hour or so, I realized that I wasn't going to get back to sleep, so I got up, dressed, reorganized the diaper bags for the trip, made a pot of coffee, and I'm pretty much ready to go right now.

Too bad the babies won't be ready to leave for three or four hours yet. And Russ is still sound asleep. At least I got a few hours of sleep, and he's driving, so I can nap in the car (time to practice "sleep when the babies sleep", right? :-).

We have a pair of bulging diaper bags from the hospital, filled with enough formula, bottles (they'll still need their formula measured carefully for a little while), and diapers to last a couple of days. Loading those up really made the whole "times two" thing hit home, as did trying to cram enough into one bag to last for the whole drive. Then again, my idea of "enough" is probably more like "enough, even if we get stuck in traffic... for three days."

The NICU staff has been very helpful in getting us ready to go without much stress at all. Everything that could be scheduled or done a day or three in advamce, they've done. The babies have had a whole day to rest without pictures, procedures, baths, and so on. They've been on the home monitors (along with the hospital monitor) since yesterday, so we know those are working well and that we can hook them up correctly. Last night we practiced measuring and giving the medicine that we'll have at hme. The doctor even said he'd get the babies checked out and ready to go first thing this morning so we can get an early start (their usual schedule puts NICU discharges in the afternoon or evening). By the time that and all of the paperwork is done, we should be able to get their 9am feeding into them just before we leave, so we shouldn't have to stop for the first few hours. It's usually an 8-hour drive, but it will take us at least a few hours longer with baby stops, so it will be late tonight before we get in.

I can hardly believe that we are taking them home today, after all that has happened -- especially since they aren't even supposed to be born for another month. I'm amazed at how far they have come in just a few weeks. I'm also amazed at how good they are... when they wake up early, before feeding time, they usually just lie there quietly and look around, or make cute little waking-up noises. They've rarely cried or been fussy at all unless someone was doing something unpleasant to them. Is it too much to hope that the behavior and the schedule will keep going this smoothly?

Even if it doesn't, at least we'll be home, and everything should be a lot easier to handle there. There are many things here that we will miss when we leave, but it will be nice to sleep in my own bed again after two months away!

Stay tuned for Twins... The Home Game!