Part 3

Despite the fact that emotionally, July 31st was a horrible day for me; I had a hope that the Brady that Kairi had that morning at 1 am, was going to be her last one. Sure enough, when my mother and I arrived at the NICU on August 1st, they told us she had not had a Brady since. The rule is, preemies with Bradys have to wait 5 days from the last Brady to go home. Before even if she went a couple of hours, we would always calculate in our heads when she would be able to go home. On August 2nd, when we came in, there were still no Bradys! I nearly died when the nurse came over and said, "The doctor thinks that Kairi will be able to go home today." Of course, my mom was super worried about the Bradys. The reason they were letting her go was because she was old enough and not way too premature. They felt that the last Brady she had on the 31st was truly her last one... and it was. She had all of her final tests, and a little later was wheeled off to a room where they took her first portraits! SO CUTE! Unfortunately, all of the take home clothes I had for her were WAY too small. Up until then, all of the clothes they put on the babies are supplied by the hospital and most of them were actually taped up. You have to imagine, some of these babies are so tiny, there is no way they could make clothes that small. Kairi was actually one of the bigger ones. There was a boy in the incubator next to Kairi's that was about a month old, and weighed about three pounds. (Story about his family, they were actually on vacation at Disney and the mom went into labor! She actually had him in the hotel elevator! He was about three months premature. And she has to stay there with him until he can go home. Which will probably be around her original due date. POOR THING! Thank God for the Ronald McDonald house to give her a place to stay or else she would not have been able to do it.) I can not even verbalize how thrilled we all were to have Kairi come home with us that day. She woke up at first every two hours on the dot to be fed. (Now it's almost every four hours) Due to the fact that she was premature, she is really not supposed to be around other children for a while, but it's been hard with small children in the family. We were not allowed to take her out in public at first because of germs. Anyone that comes over to visit her is supposed to wash their hands before touching her, but actually that's the rule no matter if they are preemie or not, you don't want to jeopardize the health of the baby for something that miniscule. A small cold that someone might pass onto the baby could easily become pneumonia to such an underdeveloped immune system. Speaking of visitors, Kairi wants to know when you are coming over again Amy and Susan. My mother is completely in love with Kairi. When it was time for her to finally go back to Maryland, we were all so sad. She was such a blessing and a tremendous help. I know I would not have been able to do it without her helping me. Even after I came home from the hospital, it was still hard for me to get around due to the pain I was in and the amount of stairs in my house. The big question, will I be doing this again? It's obviously way to soon to think about that, but I have to say the love I feel and the whole experience is definitely worth repeating. If I do have another baby though, I do hope it would be a little less complicated. I know if I have another, it will have to be through C section again. Which is fine by me... I didn't have to go through labor! No contractions, no watermelon out of a keyhole metaphors; just give me an IV and roll me to the OR! ***I know this post was way more than a day later... but I'm on a different computer, and was waiting for the pictures to put with my post.