The First 48

Once you've given birth, the next 48 hours are a whirl wind! You're wired and excited about meeting the newest member of your family. Meanwhile, there are 8 doctors in the delivery room working on different things. Two check the baby, two are working on you one takes off your monitor, one fills out paper work, and the others are there in case people need something. You get to hang out with your new baby for as long as you want before they weigh him/her and measure the length. They ask if you are planning on breast feeding and if you say yes, they immediately take the kid and put him on your boob. It feels weird and you know the kid knows what she's doing but you don't. That only lasts a few minutes. While all this is going on, you realize, you need to tell your family the good news. When our daughter was born it was 2am, so no one was downstairs in the hospital waiting room waiting for the good news, they were all sleeping. They knew we were in the hospital and were waiting for us to call, but in the mean while they slept. My parents didn't even hear the phone ring the first time we called, the answering machine picked up! So we called my husbands parents and told them the good news and the baby's gender and name and had a good chat and then we called my parents back and gave them the same good news! After that it was off to our room.

Once in the room you realize that you are starving, because who knows how long it has been since you last ate. In my case I was nauseous from the contractions so I didn't eat anything for about 10 hours prior to delivery. So you eat something while the baby is sleeping in the bassinet next to you. The nurses come in and introduce themselves, telling you how beautiful your baby is and what a beautiful name you gave her (I'm sure they say this to everyone, even if they don't mean it!) and ask if they can take the baby and give her a bath. And while you don't want to let the kid out of your sight, a bath would be nice. So you let the baby go get a bath and the nurses show you how to clean yourself off in the genital area every time you pee and give you this wonderful pad that has a built in ice pack to relieve some of the pain you are just realizing you have down there. And then they let you unwind and sleep.

I should say 'sleep.' because if your breast feeding the come in every 2-4 hours to let you feed the baby. (We'll get into breast feeding at a later post) So the good news is the nurses are awesome and help you so you are not stumbling blindly through this phase in life.

You have many excited visitors - especially new grandparents -who come in to see the baby, not you...this is pretty standard from here on out. They stay as long as you let them & drinking in this new little member of the family, sometimes leaving when you need to feed the baby, sometimes not. You tell the story of the birth over and over again to the grandmas who try to remember giving birth to you or your husband, while the men recall their part in the story - driving really fast, not being at home when their wife went into labor, leaving after the birth to go home and take a nap but throwing up first, you know typical guy stuff :) ! Then the visitors say their goodbyes and head home to get a good night sleep.

Once everyone leaves you have a few precious moments alone with your new little baby. Here you can really inspect and take in this little thing that you gave life to. They are so small and so fragile, you have to hold their head because their neck isn't strong enough, you count their little fingers and toes over and over again, you watch her take little breaths as she silently sleeps in your arms. Then it is time to feed her again.

Our daughter, Naomi, under the UV lights.

The second day the pediatrician came to talk to us and tell us that our daughter had Jaundice. It is common these days in babies, and there are many reasons that a baby can have jaundice. Our daughter had it because she has a different blood type that I do. The baby's skin looks yellow due to old blood cells left in the body. The way that the doctors remedy this situation is to put your baby under UV lights. Depending on how bad the jaundice is and how fast your baby's body gets rid of the old blood cells, the longer the baby needs to stay under the lights. Our daughter had to stay under the lights the whole second day - 24 hours, and she only got to come out and see us when it was time to eat. This was really hard, not seeing her whenever we wanted for a whole day. It was like we had already grown so accustomed to having her with us, and then she was gone. She wasn't really gone, she was just in the nursery and we could go in and see her whenever we wanted. But it was a shock as to how fast you could grow attached to this new member of your family. We occupied our time by going to classes that the hospital offered - bathing your newborn and breastfeeding classes.

Dad and Naomi

Finally it was time to be discharged and our daughter got the go ahead to leave with us, which was a quite a relief! This was the scariest part, leaving the hospital, I mean they were actually letting us go home with this baby. Don't they know we don't know what we're doing?! It took a little bit to figure out the car seat and how to buckle her in, good thing it was just us in the room, or we'd have looked like unfit parents. Driving home the baby slept, my husband drove and I sat in the back seat watching the baby. I think my husband was nervous driving such precious cargo home, but he didn't say anything about it if he was.

We got home and brought our daughter in to meet our dog, Pippin. They hit it off right away, and the rest is, as they say, history!