Are you home yet?

Yes. Ginger was released late this afternoon. Although we had been kicked out of the mom and baby wing, we stayed in the NICU with the girls until about 5:30 before heading home. We're back with Patrick and Charlie, all sleeping in our own beds for the first time since Tuesday. It's good to be home. Patrick and Charlie were thrilled and relieved to see us.

The lead nurse in the NICU moved the girls to the NICU East after we'd left. We consider that a promotion from NICU North, even though they'll be receiving all the same care in both places. Primarily it's a space issue because they keep having births at CPMC.

The IVs will come out once they're eating 33 ml at a feeding; right now Evelyn is at about 16 ml and Anna is still less. That's still a little bit away, obviously. The temperature probes seem to have disappeared. Another benchmark passed!

We didn't get a chance to speak with the social worker about transferring to Peninsula. I think perhaps the social worker doesn't have any weekend shifts, and asking to speak to her yesterday probably would have come off as pushy. Anyway, we're supposed to find her on Monday when we're in the NICU visiting. One of the NICU neonatologists seemed to think there were no medical reasons why they couldn't be released to Peninsula's step-down NICU as early as Monday. Notice the use of the adjective "medical"; we've been warned that HMOs don't like to pay for transport merely for the convenience of the parents. And the problem with twins is that they present twice the transport costs -- there doesn't seem to be a bulk rate on ambulances. So we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.