The Hospital Stay

Evelena and Henri were born on Tuesday, October 3rd. We were discharged on Thursday, October 5th. Our time in the hospital was a blur of feeding them, changing their diapers, and just staring at them absolutely in awe of how perfect they were. We were so grateful that they were healthy. The reality that we were now parents was something for which we continually had to pinch ourselves.

(note the stork leggings in the above photo which have been with us throughout the journey!)

You'll notice that sleep was not really among our activities in the hospital. Here's a picture of the whiteboard in our hospital room to help us keep track of which baby did what...

Each diaper change is indicated in the left column by first name initial as well as abbreviation for the, um, variety of diaper contents. Each feeding is similarly listed in the right column. So yeah, not much sleep. But honestly, even when they were asleep it was so hard to calm ourselves to the extent that every little noise they made didn't startle us and send us to their cradle wondering if everything was ok. It was. Fortunately, we had a lot of help from our parents and the occasional professional diaper change by a nurse.

Perhaps the biggest storyline of our time in the hospital was Jenna. I will not share specific details because it is not our story to tell. As far as we knew, everything went well with the C section and after the surgery she went to recovery while we went with Henri and Evelena to give baths and feed them. Later that afternoon, Jenna was back in the room next to us along with her family but she was still very weak from everything that happened that morning. So she was not up to holding them quite yet.

Later on that same day, we noticed Jenna was no longer in the room and found out that she was taken back into surgery Tuesday evening. We were definitely worried bc obviously our hope is that everything would have gone totally smoothly. We rallied everyone we knew to pray for her. We were so concerned for her and for her family. We had grown so close over the last several months and so whatever struggle they were going through was also our struggle. Jon received word from Joe late Tuesday night that Jenna was stable. We had no idea how serious it actually was but we are SOOOOO grateful for the medical staff that got her through the night.

One of the things that was so meaningful to us during our hospital stay was the love and generosity we received from Jenna and Joe's families. Joe's sisters and mom, Jenna's sisters and mom, all came by our room to visit and check to see how the babies were doing. Even as Jenna was going through what she was going through they all wanted to hold the babies and extend their love to them. We were overwhelmed by their warmth toward us. One of Joe's sisters gave us 2 beautiful quilts she had made. We all shared many hugs and tears.

By Wednesday afternoon, Jenna was up for a visit and so we enjoyed sacred time with her and her family.

That 2nd night, we took the nurses up on their offer to bring our babies into the nursery so we could sleep. We knew we needed sleep for our trip back home which would begin the next day so sleep sounded pretty good. In addition to monitoring them and checking vitals, they also did a super-cute photo shoot which among other gems was this photo:

The nurses picked up Henri and Evelena around 11:30pm and we woke up around 6am, which felt like a winter hibernation. We both decided we missed them and so walked in a sleepy stupor down to the nursery to pick up our children. We had a pediatrician visit later that morning and everything looked good for discharge. Kind of crazy to think that somehow we were qualified to be leaving with these two newborns.

Around 11am or so on Thursday, we shared goodbyes with Jenna and Joe (sorry to the nurse who witnessed some serious ugly crying). We exchanged gifts, words of gratitude, and hugs that couldn't possibly say or express enough. This was not how things had played out in our heads going into it. We were hoping we'd all be leaving the same day. That made it additionally difficult beyond how hard it already would have been to say goodbye. We are forever connected to the Martins and are so thankful we were brought together for this journey.