How Many?

Chapter 11

After a perfect birthday dinner with the love of my life, our lives went back being in the hospital every day visiting our babies. It is now July 10th. The quads are now almost 2 months old. They are almost to the time when they were originally due. Niall and I walked into the NICU and headed straight for our precious babies. They are all doing amazing. Even little Jaelyn is doing great! She doesn’t have any more apnea episodes and we got to hold her about 2 weeks ago for the first time. I took Ainsley out of her now open isolette. She was able to be in it because she could successfully hold her body temperature without it dropping. I sat down in the rocking chair and held my baby girl close. She was getting bigger. She’s gained 2 pounds since she was born! Her doctor said she’ll be able to come home in a few days. While I held Ainsley, Niall went over and grabbed Carter. Those two had a very close bond. Whenever Carter was crying, it was Niall who could comfort him. He was certainly a daddy’s boy. I was okay with that because Ainsley is certainly a momma’s girl. Bryson and Jaelyn didn’t have a preference over the two of us and that was fine with us. I switched Ainsley with Bryson after about 45 minutes and Niall switched to Jaelyn. We couldn’t wait to start taking them home. I saw Ainsley’s nurse come walking towards us and I shut off my iPhone so I could pay attention to her. “Mr. and Mrs. Horan, I have some very exciting news for you! Ainsley can go home tomorrow! We just need her to pass the car seat test. This test is done to make sure she doesn’t have any apnea, desaturation or bradycardia episodes. This test typically lasts for 90 minutes which we can conduct now if you have her car seat here.” “I’ll go get her car seat out of the car.” Niall said putting Jaelyn back in her incubator. He went out to the car and came back about 10 minutes later with Ainsley’s car seat. Her nurse took her out of her isolette, and put her into her car seat and attached the monitor to her so we could make sure nothing would happen. We sat there and watched to make sure everything was okay. After the 90 minutes were up, we realized that nothing happened and we would officially get to take our first angel home! I couldn’t be happier and I knew Niall was as well. He took a picture on his IPhone of Ainsley in her car seat with the caption “Finally get to take Ainsley home! She passed the car seat test! #prouddaddy.” Within 10 minutes of him posting the picture there were thousands of mentions, retweets, replies and favorites. While I was happy to be taking Ainsley home, I felt guilty for having to leave the other three behind. We got in the car and headed home with our precious bundle of joy. They were 10 days shy of being 2 months old and I was happy with how they were all doing health-wise.