This baby is awesome...

Hands down, best baby I ever had.

We're well into our second day of having our actual baby in our actual house, and... hang on...

(little bit of sleep fussing from the boy.)

Had to go and check, of course. He makes a lot of noise, but now that I think about it, he seems to be settling down somewhat. Right now, his co-sleeper is in the livingroom, and we've been sleeping in shifts. The overnight at the hospital was... not relaxing, so we are trying to make up for it. It was wonderful to be alone with our baby for the first time, but it was not like being at home. We did not sleep at all, and then Monday was... not relaxing. But none of the discharge experience was. It was remarkably frustrating and haphazard, especially considering that they do this all the time. Nurse Bev went over our discharge papers, containing some pretty important stuff, while I tried to breastfeed on 1.5 hours "sleep;" the doctor called me at 11:00 a.m. to tell me that we could not send baby boy home if we did not have a pediatrician assigned to him. Makes sense, but when dealing with frazzled parents, would it not be a good idea to have, oh, I don't know, some sort of What to Expect When Discharging packet? Seems like they may as well have just dropped him off in a basket on our porch.

I was to the point where I would not allow Pete to leave me alone with any of the staff. I just could not deal with it. The last straw was when Pete was heading out to the car with the carseat, and Nurse Bev said "Where are you going with that?"

"To the car."

"Oh no you're not. He needs to leave in that."

"You mean, I can't carry him out of the hospital?" I said.

"No."

Why?"

"I don't know."

Even though I had seen at least two babies leave the hospital in their mother's arms, one just an hour before. But it was enough. Fine. I just want out of here. I could not fight it anymore. I can't carry my own goddamn baby outta here? Fine.

(Max just jumped up into Finn's bed for the first but, I am sure, not the last, time.)

It was so odd, leaving there. After two and a half months, we just sort of wandered out with our baby to a couple of weak "congratulations" and waves.

Of course, it was all worth it. The past two days have been magnificent. There will be plenty of time in the future to lament our lack of sleep; for now, we are just marveling at the fact of being together as a family and enjoying the freedom granted by the comforts of home. Picking him up, changing him without anyone hovering over us, and sitting on the couch watching Star Wars while he sleeps on a pillow on Pete's lap are all luxuries to us, and we are reveling in them.

The weird thing is, this is not weird at all. It is totally natural to have him here and be taking care of him. Though many times a day, we stop and say "This is our baby. We have a baby."

And what a baby he is...