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I was discharged from the hospital today. It's amazingly difficult to leave a hospital when your babies are still there. As much as I hate being in the hospital, I kept trying to think of ways to get them to keep me. And actually, my pain level increased a lot overnight (perhaps my psychosomatic attempt to manipulate the system). I think I almost had my doctor convinced at one point, but he was concerned that insurance might not pay for it if there's no REALLY obvious reason to keep me, and he'd hate for me to get stuck with that hefty bill. Anyway, I couldn't delay it forever, so here I am now in my own bed.

As for the boys, they are obviously staying for a while. A lot of people have asked how long they will be there. No one knows the answer really - it just depends on how they do - but babies born this early are typically ready to go home around 36 or 37 weeks' gestational age. So about a month, give or take.

The last few days have been quite a roller coaster. I think that is likely to be the nature of things. As with just about every child's development, the babies make progress and then seem to backslide, and then make more progress and then seem to backslide.

A few people are interested in lots of details about the ups and downs of the boys' progress, so here are those:

Yesterday was a particularly stressful day. Both babies had some issues that were causing them a fair amount of distress, if only because the nurses kept having to poke them with needles. Poor Brickley's little veins have not been tolerating IVs very well. They try to do them as few and far between as possible, but a preemie's veins are so fragile that sometimes they just don't work well. Brickley had been getting at least one IV per day (they try to keep it to no more than 2 per week normally). Yesterday he had to have 4 put in, which just broke my heart beyond belief. The doctor came and talked to us about putting in a picc line, which is a more robust IV-type line, but instead of a tiny spot in your arm, they thread a catheter up your vein all the way to your heart. It is much more complicated than an IV and has some additional risks, but apparently is not more painful than getting an IV (the initial poke is the same) and is much more stable. I'll spare you more details about it, but we decided to go ahead to spare him getting IVs over and over, which would probably stress him out too much. The picc line took just about all day to do (it's a sterile procedure done in phases with Xrays inbetween to monitor things and place the line correctly). They started around noon, and were finished by about 11pm.

Oswell also lost his IV and had to get another. The nurse told me how difficult it had been for him (why did she tell me that? Why? Seriously, I didn't need a description of them having to hold him down and how much he fought and hated it). By evening he was also stressed out and needed to go back on oxygen (he had been completely off not only oxygen, but even air flow before that).

I spent a long long time holding Brickley last night. Oswell was too fragile at the time.

Today they are both doing fine. Brickley's picc line is doing well so he's much happier. Oswell is still on oxygen a little since yesterday I held each one for about an hour. Jared even got to hold Oswell. Bless his heart - the babies can only be held so much right now, and Jared tries to let me have most of that time.

My mom has Seville for the night, so we are planning to return later. Can't wait!