Austin, Janelle, Zachary and Jeremiah: Bringing Home Jeremiah

First off, today Jeremiah is a week old. It has been a crazy busy week. We will start to catch up on blogging about his birth and all the days until now. Today is the first day we are all home without visitors and it is so nice to finally feel like we can get started on our new family. Now…to blog about bringing Jeremiah home.

We were very thankful that Jeremiah’s numbers were good enough to allow him to be discharged from the hospital on Monday evening, less than 48 hours after being born. Since he was Coombs Positive (same as Zachary) we would have to return for testing at the hospital on Tuesday and to the doctor Wednesday just to monitor his levels. Zachary spent Monday at day care, something we were trying to avoid since he had been out for two weeks and we didn’t want him exposed to the seasonal viruses, but it was important for Austin to be there at the hospital as we went through all the final info with the doctors.

We knew early in the morning we would be discharged at 8:00 pm, Austin went home mid-day and got Zachary all cleaned up and spent some time with him at home, then they both came to the hospital at 8:00 to pick up Jeremiah and me. We are thankful that it worked out this way, we really wanted Zachary to be with us when we brought Jeremiah home to help him understand and so our family would be all together.

The temperature had dropped on Monday, Austin took advantage of this and dressed Zachary in some cute cuddly clothes. The above video is when they arrived to our room to pick us up. Z still knew who the baby was and seemed to be interested in him, but not fully consumed.

Then we headed outside and piled everyone into the ‘Cruz.

Austin getting Jeremiah all snug in his car seat while Zachary waits patiently.

Ready to go, except a few blankets.

Zachary can barely reach Jeremiah’s leg from his car seat. We are not sure how long we are going to be able to keep them right next to each other. We want Jeremiah in the center because it is safer, it allows me to sit next to him easily, and it allows Austin to sit back to his normal distance when driving. If we move Jeremiah behind the drivers seat Austin would have to move up a few inches to make sure his seat and Jeremiah’s don’t touch and I would have to climb over a child seat to sit next to Jeremiah. But it is also is not good if Zachary can hit his brother while we are driving which will inevitability happen if he can reach him.

Warmed up under the blanket and extremely confused as to what is going on, it would be so odd to be born and be in a hospital environment and then set out into the world for the first time. I can’t imagine the things that go through his mind or what he is capable of seeing, hearing, understanding, etc.

We were finally all home around 9:00 and took a minute to let Z admire his little brother. He was very sweet with Jeremiah and knelt down on his own to be “gentle” with him. We have taught Zachary the term gentle to basically mean pet softly. We started on his giant turtle from the Holm’s, then let him practice on the animals. He is pretty good at being gentle but we still supervise.