We Made It

I'm writing this post with all three of my children safely sleeping in their beds. What a wonderful feeling.

This morning, the first thing Dominic said when he woke up was, "is Cora coming home today?," and when I replied that she was, he immediately started jumping up and down and said, "I'm so excited! We made it, mommy! We made it!"

Most of today was spent trying to get discharged. Of course there were many conversations to be had: the discharge instructions, the pharmacist reviewing medications, the what to do in case of emergencies discussion, the electrophysiologist who came for one final interrogation of the pacemaker, and many, many more. We didn't actually leave the hospital until past 3:00 this afternoon, but that gave us plenty of time to say goodbye to all the friends we've made. We even ran into one of the very first nurses we had, actually on our second day at UCSF, who we hadn't seen since. She had a lot of catching up to do.

When we finally headed out, Cora was as calm as could be. She stared intently out the window the whole way home. She seemed fascinated by the light and the fresh air. I sat with her in the back seat just to keep an eye on her, and she did great. We listened to tunes and she took it all in.

Pulling into our driveway we were greeted with beautiful decorations on the front of our house, and a large welcoming committee of family and friends. The kids were bouncing off the walls with excitement. They nearly crawled into Cora's car seat and swallowed her up, so I had to fend them off a few times.

Most importantly, we did take our neighborhood walk. Cora's eyes were watering from the bright sun and the wind, but she kept them wide open and took it all in. When we got to the park, Dom and Cosie raced off to play with Jason and Papa, and I took Cora and held her on a bench while she sucked away on her binky elephant. I thought she might be edgy or panicky with so much stimulation, but she just calmly sat there, and every so often reached up to grab my face, like a security thing. She seemed utterly at ease with the whole scene as we sat there and watched all the good parts of life in action.

There were definitely some Hallmark card moments today, and there were also some real life ones as well. Simply trying to get the medications right required all the brainpower I had to offer. They were able to wean some of Cora's medications over the past few days, but she was still discharged on eleven medications, each with one, two, three or four doses, administered at eight separate times during the day. (Grammie made me a poster-sized matrix of it all that I now have hanging on the wall.) Needless to say, it's a lot to keep straight, along with the oxygen and keeping the continuous feeds going on the pump. We'll get there.

For now, I am just endlessly grateful for the opportunity to be home. For the opportunity to let love and family heal Cora even more than she has been healed already. I'm grateful for our loving family and network of friends who stand by our side through every single thing. I'm grateful for Jason, who I will now see again, every single day. And I'm grateful for these three kiddos who have truly blessed me with their presence. For Cosette, my little spicy meatball, who could not be funnier or sweeter or more likely to be a future homecoming queen. For Dominic, who understands life more than any child I've ever met, and whose whole universe became righted today when our family all moved home. And for Cora, my sweet little lionheart, the most peaceful baby who ever lived, the oldest soul I ever knew.

Home together tonight. No hospital shifts to take. No one leaving. Nowhere to be but here, together. As it should be.

Thank you, big, generous, super-god for all these million miracles.