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JenniferTenney

Anniversary of Coming Home

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Today is the anniversary of bringing my baby home from the hospital. As you all know, in some ways, this is the anniversary of the day when I really became a parent, because up till February 25th, Dakota really was cared for by a whole team of doctors and nurses, but on February 25th, for the first time, she was solely our responsibility and ours to protect and love. The weekend before, I had roomed in the hospital for 48 hours and had done every feed of Dakota's. She had not quite taken the volume she was supposed to, but she had gained weight (barely). The fellow thought that Dr. Kays might be willing to let us go home ... the Nurse Practitioner was leaning the other way ... one Nurse and the Occupational Therapist were pushing for us to go home because they believed Dakota would thrive better at home .... so we were just waiting on Dr. Kays, the man who makes all the decisions. One thing about Dr. Kays is that when you really need him, he is always there, to the extent of spending the night with a critical baby and never leaving his/her bedside until he/she is stabile. But once the baby is past the critical time, he becomes harder and harder to track down (and rightfully so-he is a buys man, but it is frustrating when you need a decision). So we had been waiting for 2 days for the Nurse Practioner to be able to talk to Dr. Kays and Derek and I were sitting in the cafeteria when Derek spotted Dr. Kays accross the cafeteria. He screamed out "THERE'S DR. KAYS!" Everyone looked, I wanted to hide under the table. Dr. Kays smiled and came over and said, "I heard your baby gained like 4 grams/day and you want to go home." He then said, seriously, I think Dakota is ready and he just wanted to check with the Fellow who had been closely following us and then he would sign the discharge papers. Yay! So that next morning, we got the phone call and frantically packed up my inlaw's motor home we were staying in and tried to clean it the best we could. We hurried down to the hospital, shoved a bottle in Dakota, got a flurry of instructions, signed a ton of papers, picked up prescriptions, got the oxygen set up, and were out of there by 3pm. It was so frantic that I couldn't breath until we were driving home. I called my mom and she started crying she was so happy. It didn't hit me until we walked into the front door of our house (which I had not been at since the day after Dakota's birthday-day after Christmas Day). There were unopen Christmas presents and Christmas decorations everywhere. I walked with a sleeping Dakota to her room, which I had set up in faith that this day would arrive. I placed her in her crib and took a deep breath. We did it. We brought our baby home!
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  1. Crystal Benitez's Avatar
    That is an amazing story. I know the feeling of joy when you just walk into your house the first time with your baby. Happy Anniversary!!