Mud Pies & Minivans: Zye's Journey: Here 2 Home

After a wonderful & smooth delivery & getting to introduce Zye to all our wonderful family & friends, we were definitely ready to get home & begin this new chapter of our lives. Then suddenly, a road block tried to come our way. We were informed that Zye had jaundice. His levels got high enough that he got put under light therapy for 24 hours. They only let him out for 20-30 minutes every 3 hours to breastfeed. This was definitely a challenge that took me a moment to wrap my mind around. I think every mother gets excited for that time in the hospital that they just get to bond & get to know their newborn & now I was finding out that I was going to have to wait for that to really happen.

After I shed some tears, I decided to focus on the positive & just look forward to each feeding whether it was the 1pm feeding or the 1am feeding. This would only be for a short season & I had to dig deep & find the strength and rely on God.

By the next morning I was definitely ready to go home. I had not seen my husband or the ladies & was more then ready to get some real bonding time in with Zye. Then I was told that he was going to have to stay yet another day & more hours in light therapy. That was not the news I wanted or expected to hear.

I don't know if you have ever seen light therapy, but it is where your baby gets stripped down to their diaper with a blindfold on & put in a thing that looks like a mini tanning bed. Its a hard thing to see & as a parent can leave you feeling a lil' helpless for a second.

To top things off, I was also being discharged from the hospital that morning. No mommy dreams of leaving the hospital without their newborn. I would not wish that feeling on anyone and with Justin having to stay at home with all the girls while I was dealing with all of this, I was kind of feeling a lil' overwhelmed & alone. I had to take a moment, put my emotions in check, & once again fully rely on God.

Suddenly, as I was getting my stuff together, a nurse came in & told me she was going to pull some strings for me. I was still going to be discharged technically, but they were going to put me in a "nesting program" where I could basically stay in a hospital room 1 more day, but would no longer have any nurses or anything at my disposal. Basically, you become invisible.

I was so excited to have this opportunity to stay in a room & still be able to feed Zye every few hours. FAVOR. I immediately asked her to "sign me up"! It was a lil' challenging to get through those 24 hours minus a nurse, my hubby, & meds, but we made it through stronger & Zye even more healthy!

Now that we have completed our second day at home, I am so happy to report that things are all coming together. Zye had his first doctors appointment (Addie had one as well) & things are looking good. He is almost back at birth weight & fitting right into the mix of things. I am feeling a lot better & enjoying every single second of being back with my ladies after going through 48 hours of withdrawal ("face time" just was not doing it for me). The ladies are head over heals for their brother & have already nicknamed him their "lil' buddy". They have adjusted so well. I definitely contribute a large part of it to their daddy since he did such a good job keeping life at home pretty normal & on schedule while I was away.

I feel so blessed that our family is all healthy, happy, & together! God is so good & this was just another situation where we got to come out stronger as a family & have yet another awesome testimony! I am so excited to experience life with 5 kiddos. Ready or not, here we go!!! Yay!

-M&M Momma

P.S. The pictures are a lil' out of order because they are from 2 cameras. :)