It is such a great thing being a third time parent. When Kye was born I discharged from the hospital right at 24 hours after birth. We went home at 7pm. And we forgot to fill my prescription for my ibprophen (yes, it was a HORRIBLE first night). When Britt was born I stayed in the hospital for the full 48 hours. We went home right after Kye’s nap and after Britt ate. We filled my prescription on the way home from the hospital.
With Tess I knew I was going to also stay the full 48 hours and, again, wanted to wait to leave until the kids were up from naps and could come up to the hospital. I made sure to start the discharge process early that day and I had a SUPER smart idea to ask for my prescription for the ibuprofen early. It was already filled and picked up prior to me even leaving the hospital 🙂 Live and learn!
In-between visitors and nursing sessions on our 3rd day at the hospital I got everything all packed up and ready for us to head out! A nursery nurse came by and did her last check prior to discharging us! I wanted her 100% ready to go so after the kids arrived and after I nursed her we could just leave and not be waiting on anyone!
Part of the discharge situation included weighing me. Ugh. I dreaded that, especially because my milk was already in so I knew it wouldn’t help out the scale! I am not sure what I weighed when I gave birth to her and usually I do gain weight while in labor. But based on the last time I got weighed at the dr. office…I only lost four pounds. Yes. Four. I didn’t let it bother me as I knew I had a lot of fluid from the ivs, I had my milk just coming in, and I hadn’t pooped since before labor. I knew in the coming days more weight would come off and I also knew that just in my short hospital stay I could already see a difference in my stomach. It still looked SO BIG right after birth. And my belly button was sticking out. So gross. I was worried that it wouldn’t go back in and even tried taping it down but that didn’t work haha. My stomach was noticeably smaller when I left the hospital and continued to shrink down some each day! Thankfully 😉
I also gave away the LAST of the treats that I made for the hospital staff! I made 16 this time around and it was plenty! Everyone really appreciated them and I think it made them all like me a little more 😉 Candy always helps people like you right?!?!
I love that they do this now too! A sweet card from all the staff who helped me during our stay with Tess’s footprints in it!!!
I forgot to take a picture of this book while we were at the hospital but we had everyone who came to visit sign it. This is my favorite gift idea for an expectant mother! It’s the On the Night You Were Born
board book and I brought along a Sharpie for everyone to sign on the pages of the book 🙂 I LOVE IT!
Once Kye and Britt were up from nap they headed up to visit with us before bringing us home!
There has never been a more true saying on a shirt 🙂
These pics of Britt really need to be captioned!!!
Can’t you just see her thinking “I’m so over this Big Sister gig” haha
Of course I got done nursing her and we were all ready to go but a nurse had to come by and take off her alarm bracelet before we could leave. Since so many babies were born the same day she was, there were a lot of people leaving that day too! I tried to just be patient and keep everyone else happy too. Tess was fine just snoozing away on Daddy’s chest 🙂
The older two got SUPER restless. They had spent enough time at the hospital those few days and there just wasn’t any way to entertain them during the way. Thankfully I still had some random zoo app on my iPad from the short time span where we used it when Britt initially started potty training over a year ago to help her stay sitting on the potty. Y’all know how anti-screen time I am for the kids but it was one of those times that I was thankful I had that app! It kept them interested long enough for the nurse to finally come set us free 🙂
All three of my kids cried when first being put in the car seat. However, if you compare all of their first time experiences (Kye’s here and Britt’s here) you can see that Tess has the least awful cry of them all haha! She doesn’t even look all that upset about it 😉
They wheeled me down to the car and I had to hold the car seat in my lap. It broke my heart because Britt was crying and wanted to sit with me. I felt so bad!!! When we got to the van I hoped out of the wheelchair to get in the car and a lady was sitting nearby and commented on how crazy it was that I just had my third baby and was getting up so easily. She said she’d just had her 4th and was not bouncing back like I was. I felt the BEST I’ve felt after any of my babies for sure!
We rearranged the van seating prior to Tess being born. We took out one of the 2nd row bucket seats and both big kids are sitting in the third row (yes, Britt still rear facing so it’s tough getting her in and out!) and then Tess is in the other second row seat. It’s a good set up! We didn’t have the mirrors set up yet so we couldn’t even see Tess on the ride home. But she slept like a champ 😉
When we got home we had a beautiful Welcome Home sign waiting for us!
She’s home 🙂
First thing the kids wanted to show her the nursery! They had worked hard on getting it all set up so we headed there right away 🙂
Britt was VERY whiney and VERY clingy and it really broke my heart. I felt so, so much guilt right away and I had just gotten home! It was a chaotic first few minutes. We wanted to go ahead and put Tess down for her nap so we could eat dinner as a family before she ate again but Britt was just a hot mess and wasn’t making things easy. Zach said “omg this is terrible already” and I totally lost it for a second. Thankfully we realized soon that there was a legit reason Britt was being that way…and it wasn’t due to jealousy issues with little sister. It was probably less than 10 min of that overwhelming omg-what-did-we-get-ourselves-into moment but then from then on out everything went great!
First picture of me with my girls!
First time swaddled in her Miracle Blanket 
and first time down for sleep in her crib!
Once she was down for her nap I left her room and the big kids needed some fun so we let them open the gift that had arrived for Tess and told them that Tess said she wanted them to play with all the toys 😉
My dad and Audrey had let us know that they were going to have dinner for us delivered to the house. I was in SHOCK when we walked in and saw Chicken Salad Chick. I mean it was a TON of it!!!! So BEYOND thoughtful! I didn’t even know they knew it’s my hardcore favorite thing ever 🙂 It was a mega blessing to us! We ate it for dinner that night and then I, legit, had it for lunch every single day that next week. I’m not a huge fruit eater but I loved all the fruit they had sent too and was so glad to have healthy food to eat each day! Wasn’t that such a great surprise?!?! Made my day!
We got Tess settled then all sat down to eat together. We were probably 10 min into our meal when Britt VOMITED all over the table. It shocked us! We realized she had a small temp and Zach said she hadn’t eaten much at all the past day or so. Hello stomach bug, thanks for the awesome timing. Bless her heart! Even though we felt SO BAD that she wasn’t feeling good…we were also thankful that there was a reason for her behavior and that it wasn’t due to jealousy/hatred/other issues involving Tess!
We got Britt in the bed as quick as we could and Kye got to get some sweet Tess snuggles before he went to bed for the night!
All three of our babies asleep in their beds!
Our first night with Kye was AWFUL. We were up all night and Levi (our dog) almost died. Our first night with Britt went mega smooth and we got decent sleep. Tess’s first night falls in-between the two. She had her nights and days confused (I’m sure it’s due to the mega bright lighting in the hospital nursery) so she was up a LOT that night. We tried to have her sleep in our room (in a brand new bassinet I’d bought…) and that only lasted for like 30 min. Zach and I argued about it at 1 am which wasn’t pleasant. We ended up putting her in her crib in her room that very first night (we have a snuza monitor, a video monitor, and her room is across the hall from ours). That first night home was the worst night we had with her and it still wasn’t too awful. At some point in the night Zach heard Britt and went to check on her and she had puked all over her bed. We didn’t have any clean sheets because the day I had gone into labor Britt had peed on the other set and obviously they didn’t get washed while I was in the hospital. Thankfully she has a huge bed so Zach just put her on the other side of the bed for the rest of the night until we could clean it the next morning. Haha. Zach also started not feeling well and we realized he probably had the same stomach bug.
We decided to get everyone out of the house that next morning to help keep Tess and I from getting sick! I was a ZOMBIE and added it up and had only gotten 11 hours of very broken sleep total since she’d been born. So that’s 11 broken hours in 4 nights!!! NOT GOOD! I could barely function and literally looked like death. Casey ended up coming over to help care for her while I slept and I did manage to nap a good bit during that first day. Britt was feeling a bit better and Zach was getting plenty of rest too. They stayed at Mrs. Charlotte’s all day that day and then that night Zach came home because he was feeling worse and he didn’t want to get the kids sick. So our second night home I pretty much handled most of night duty so he could rest and so he wouldn’t be breathing all over Tess.
It was NOT what I had in mind for a homecoming…but it’s life right?!? I’m thankful Tess and I never caught the bug and that Britt and Zach both recovered pretty quickly from it. And I’m especially thankful for Mrs. Charlotte and ALL of her help!
It rained the first night home so our Welcome Home sign couldn’t stay up on the garage very long. I decorated our front porch chalk board and hung the welcome sign under the porch (it lasted like a day and then fell oh well!)
I love how Kye had drawn our whole family!
Once we got home from the hospital…real life really started!
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