Glancing down at Walker, I saw him looking up at me. “I can really take them home in three days?”
“Yup. There’ll be a list of things you need to watch out for, and just for now it would be an idea to give them formula as well as the milk you’ve been expressing for us. But so long as they stay as they are, congratulations, you can go home, and the four of you can be a family.”
I was so happy about what she’d said, and my mind had been working a hundred miles an hour with what I still had to do for them, that it took a moment for her final words to hit me. When they did, the smile slowly dropped from my face.
Taking advantage of my delayed reaction, Taras got up off the bed and moved closer to her with his free hand outstretched, holding Hendrix effortlessly in one arm like he’d done this every day of his life.
“We’re very grateful to you and everyone here for what you’ve done for our sons,” he told her, and I saw her blink as she shook it gently, no doubt stunned by the full force of what those eyes on you alone could do.
Swallowing audibly, she looked over at me with wide eyes and then back at him. “You’re welcome. We love your sons in the nursery, so we’ll be sorry to see them leave.”
With one corner of his mouth hitched up in a smile, he replied smoothly, “They’re the most precious boys in the world, and I might say,” he added conspiratorially, “the most handsome ones, too.”
Give me strength not to throw up—even if what he was saying was true.
Finally, she took in a deep breath and looked over at me. “Okay, we need to make sure you have everything set to go. When you leave, they need to be in their car seats. Have you got those?”
I ignored the way Taras was staring at me and nodded. “I do. They clip into the buggy, but there are also those bassinets that can be changed into seats for them once they’re old enough,” I added unnecessarily, but it felt like I was being graded so why the hell not.
“Excellent. You have a sterilizer for their bottles, pacifiers, and things like that, yes?”
“Electric and microwave ones.”
“After they left the NICU, we put them in the same bed here because they’re calmer together, and that first night apart didn’t go well,” she reminded me.
Still, it’s not like I could forget a phone call at 3 am, where I was told that Hendrix’s oxygen stats had fallen because he’d been crying so much, so they’d given him some to help while a doctor had checked him over.
When he’d found nothing obvious, he’d concluded that he had separation anxiety from his twin. It hadn’t happened in the NICU, but not all twins who suffered from it reacted immediately, and they’d wanted to attempt them in the same bed.
I’d agreed and spent the night waiting for the time I could come and see them, to make sure he was okay with my own eyes. Which he had been.
She relayed all of it to Taras after he explained how he’d been called away on business, and had been out of signal range for his cellphone. It was a weak story, but she bought it and explained it all to him.
Once she was done, she turned back to me. “What are your plans for them with regards to sleeping?”
I’d read the books, all of the books, and I’d also spoken to friends who had babies, so I already had a plan for them.
“They’ll be in the same bed through in my room for the first six weeks. After that, I’m going to put them in separate bassinets for their naps, and at night they’ll be in the same bed in their room for another month, until I start them off through there for naps in separate beds, too. Hopefully, separating them slowly will be more effective than doing it immediately.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Taras nodding his head as he agreed with this plan, but it was the nurse—the expert on babies in my mind—that I was more interested in.
“I like that idea,” she said through a smile, and I felt like I’d passed the test. “I know we’ve had issues getting them to latch on during feedings, but continue to try with them, and don’t get upset if it doesn’t happen. You’re still expressing milk, so they’re getting what they need from you. It’ll happen when they’re ready!”
This was another thing I was struggling to accept. Almost every woman was able to feed her baby, so why couldn’t I? They weren’t tongue-tied, and they fed well from the bottle, but every time I tried to feed them myself, they got so upset that I picked up the bottle to avoid another oxygen drop.