Coming Home

The day Graham and Carson were born was the day we started asking the doctors when they'd be able to leave the NICU and come home. We were told they wouldn't give us a timeline but a good rule of thumb is to expect them home by their original due date, which in our case was October 25th.

We felt good about the progress they were making and their relatively high birth weights, so we set our sights on having both boys home by October 3rd, Ryan's birthday.

But the boys did so well, we got to take them home a whole week ahead of our original goal and got to take both boys home at the same time, something that we were not expecting to do!

We spent their final night in the hospital with them, so that we'd have the nurses nearby to help answer any questions that came up. Then we went home to make sure everything was ready before heading back to the hospital to load the boys into their car seats and head home!

Here we are with some of the NICU staff who took such great care of our little guys that they were able to come home so soon. Dr. Chen, Nurse Maureen, Nurse Angie and Nurse Susan. All of them are amazing people who will forever be part of our memory of Graham and Carson's birth!

The NICU

Because the boys came earlier than expected, they went straight from the Operating Room to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to receive around-the-clock care to get them ready to come home.

Here's Graham on his second day in the NICU.

Here's Carson (he had an IV in his head the first couple of days, so he couldn't wear a beanie - which turned out to be an easy way to identify them in photos).

Papa Joe (as he's now known) came to the NICU to visit the boys the night they were born. They were sleeping, so we decided to let them stay in their beds, but the first-time grandpa was very excited to meet his future fly fishing partners!

Here is Grandma Cindy with Carson. She flew down from Sacramento the day after they were born to spend a few hours with them before flying home. She was very excited to meet her first grandchildren.

In addition to Papa Joe and Grandma Cindy, the boys got visits from Grandma DiDi, Aunt Jamie, Ryan's Aunt Tammy, and our good family friends Jerry and Vicki Stafford. These boys were not lacking attention!

They were on heart monitors to ensure their hearts were nice and strong, they had some time under the lights to flush the jaundice from their systems, they got gavage feedings (a tube was inserted through their noses that allowed food to be delivered to their stomachs) but more than the medical procedures that helped them get ready to come home, the boys were lucky to get the special attention that the NICU nurses showered on them.

Here are the boys, showing off their gavage tubes for the camera. Graham is on the left yawning, Carson is on the right, enjoying his pacifier.

Just as they were the weeks I spent in Labor and Delivery, the nurses in the NICU were amazing women who we will remember forever!

Here's Debbie, who spent the first 6 nights with the boys. She had a great sense of humor and was very helpful in teaching us how to bathe the little guys.

We were lucky that we were prepared for them to spend some time in the NICU and we were ultimately grateful for the time they spent there, as the extra care and attention paid off with healthy babies by the time they got to come home!

The Adventure Begins

The countdown was on to make it to 34 weeks until we welcomed the boys. But after 7 weeks spent in the hospital under doctors' watch, they decided it was time to welcome Graham and Carson to the world early, so we scheduled the c-section and the boys were ready to be welcomed, 33 weeks and 2 days into my pregnancy.

Ryan was a huge support from the day we found out we were having a baby (which turned out to be two babies), he never missed a doctor's appointment, he came to the hospital multiple times each day for the 7 weeks I was there and kept me calm during what could have been a stressful delivery (this was my view during the surgery). The boys are so lucky to have him as a dad!

Graham was born at 11:00 a.m. and weighed 3lbs. 15 oz. Graham had a lot of magnesium in his system, causing him to have some trouble breathing on his own, so he was placed on a ventilator for a few hours. Here he is in the operating room, before he was taken to the NICU for some increased attention.

Carson was born seconds later at 11:01 a.m. and weighed 4lbs. 1oz. Here he is in the operating room. One of the NICU nurses brought him over to us and I got to give him a quick kiss before he went into the NICU to join his brother.

We're so excited to have Graham and Carson join our family and are looking forward to all the adventures to come!