The First Night

I definitely have a lot of catching up to do but also want to continue blogging about what is going on in the present. We brought the babies home around 6pm on Sunday, June 24th. Once we arrived at home, chaos ensued. Our families had planned on us being home on Saturday and had all made travel arrangements to leave on Sunday. I still did not feel well leaving the hospital and rather than taking the sweet couple coming home with babies in front of the house pictures, Jay carried them up through the basement, we immediately put on sweats and went straight to feeding the babies and introducing them to the dogs. And then I cried and cried and called my mama and cried. The dogs kept barking at the babies and jumping on us (remember I just had a c section 4 days prior). The babies were crying, the dogs howling, it was just chaos. I was so weak still and all of the noise was driving me to tears.

I went into mama mode and Jay and I worked to get everything settled. We put babies to bed in their cribs (well actually, they shared Holden's) and heated up leftover Chinese. I still felt terrible physically, which lead to me being completely overwhelmed. My Dad called to check on us and I couldn't form a full sentence without crying. I'm blaming hormones. I called my mom and told her to come to Charlotte as soon as she could.

Eventually I got some Advil for my pain (trying not to take any narcotics now that im home and caring for the babies). I took a little nap and woke up in a better place. I went to the nursery and just held the babies and rocked them and cried and thanked God for these absolutely perfect little people He trusted us to care for. I cried because I am so blessed to be their mom and so blessed to have Jay as my husband and their father. I just feel so much love, it was overwhelming.

The rest of the night ran a little better. We fed them at 10:30. I pumped their night bottles and we went to sleep around 11:30. At 2:45 I noticed Jay coming back in the room and freaked. I thought that I had slept through the 1:00am feed. Turns out, Jay did sleep through it but the babies never woke up. He realized it and got up at 2:00am and fed them himself without waking me up. I realize what a sweet gesture it was but felt a ton of mom guilt for missing the first nighttime feed. I also was in a ton of pain and took more meds and cried a little while I had Jay tell me every detail from the state of their diapers to how many milliliters they ate. Eventually after a late night pound cake snack I made it back to sleep.

At 5:45 I woke up to crying baby on the monitor and again freaked out because they were supposed to be fed at 4am. I ran in the nursery because I figured someone was dead (terrible I know but a very real fear of mine... And now I'm realizing they obviously wouldn't be crying if they were dead. I digress.). I asked Jay if he did the 4am
feed and he had totally slept through it. I got over the guilt and we went to town changing diapers and feeding babies. Are we going to win parents of the year? Doubtful. Were our babies going to be ok? Definitely. Do I need to ease up a bit? Yes. We are both sleep deprived and doing the best we can. As we sat and fed babies we remembered how the nursery nurses even told us that the babies often we 4 hours between feeds and they were ok. I'm confident that this is a learning process with a steep curve but we will be just fine.

I am so thankful for a husband that is so helpful. Thankful that after we fed the babies he sat with my while I pumped rather than going to bed (not to brag but he also cleans all the parts for me!) I have a renewed sense that I can do this (being a mom) and do it well. So thankful we made it through our first night.