Life at the Hospital

Life at the Hospital
October 8-10

We had a great hospital experience during our two days postpartum with baby brother.  Matt stayed with me most of the time, while my mom handled things at home with the girls.  We soaked in our time with each other and with our new baby...the calm before the storm!  We knew it would get crazy when we went back to real life, so we enjoyed that special time with just the three of us.  We also took that time to catch everyone up on baby arriving, and spent the first day going back and forth on names.  It took us about 24 hours to commit for sure to his name, but once we did we knew it was perfect for him.

We had some visitors, which we loved.  The first afternoon my mom brought the girls back to meet their new baby brother.  They were SO excited they could hardly contain themselves.  They were also emotional and exhausted and WILD!!!  After they left that first night I admit I started to get a little worried about how I would handle everything by myself when I got home.  Luckily, it just worked itself out.  That first night my neighborhood friends came to visit.  I love these girls so much, and it was so much fun to visit and share my special day with them.  The next morning our best friends Cora and Amanda came to meet our new little guy.  Knowing I had these girls to lean on when I got home, made me feel so much better.  That night we were expecting family, but none of them ended up being able to come.

We stayed until the last minute possible.  I was really holding on to that security of having the nurses to check on me and the baby, and knowing the girls were well taken care of at home.  The food was even delicious.  I got to call and order from a menu, whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to eat.  I really wanted to bring that service home with me!  We had a couple of tough things with baby while we were there.  One was his breathing sounded funny for a while, so the nurse took him to get checked out.  It turned out to be nothing, but I was glad to have help right there to be sure.  Also, we had to supplement with formula right away.  The colostrum I was making did not seem to be enough for our monster eater!  He would cry and cry because he was still hungry, and nursing wasn't enough for him.  We tried at first to use the little tube coming from the syringe while he was nursing to give him a little extra something, which worked for Emilyn when she was a newborn, but that still wasn't enough.  I ended up having to give in and let him have a bottle when he was only a day old.  He was so much happier after we did that.  It turned out to be fine for nursing anyway.  When my milk came in a few days later, he no longer needed the extra formula and he has always done great alternating between primarily nursing and the occasional bottle.  As long as he had food in him he spent a lot of time sleeping those first few days, and we held him as much as possible.

 Baby had a little bit of a rough time on his way into this world, so his face was bruised.  They put a sign on his little bed so the nurses would know not to panic, because he was bruised, not blue.