There's been a lot learning in the past 4 days.
How do you swaddle her?
How do you clean her?
How do you feed her?
Loving her has come naturally. No lessons needed there.
May 2nd
In her first two hours, she met:
Mom
Dad
Aunt C
Grandma M
Grandpa M
Aunt L
(By the way Aunt's have first initial)
May 3rd
The next day, Grace saw all the above plus:
Grandma C
Grandpa C
Aunt L's beau
May 4th
After two days at the hospital making full use of the "call nurse" button to learn all we could absorb, it was time to be back in our own bed. We were ready for the comforts of home, even if there was no menu to order from or army of helpers. The insurance seemed to agree as well.
Getting home was nice. Since Grace was early, and Dad is a procrastinator, not everything was setup. However, the house was clean (thanks Grandma M) and the laundry was folded and/or out of the dryer (thanks Aunt C).
May 5th
Grace met the house and started to make herself comfortable. She started spoiling Mom and Dad by staying fairly predictable.
Feed, dirty diaper, sleep for 1.5 to 3 hours, repeat.
Dad got more sleep on Wednesday than he usually would for work. Of course, it was dispersed over the entire day, but it was still nice. Mom, slept a little less well, but pretty decent all in all.
May 6th
Yesterday, Aunt A came down from Portland to meet Grace. They had a fine few hours together. Aunt A works in the child care industry, and she had some nice tips for Dad on how to clean Gracie better after dirty diapers. Learning to clean a little girl can be daunting to a new dad. Aunt A really put a bright spot in the day and her visit marked the high-point of the day.
Shortly after Aunt A left, there were a couple of fail boats.
Early in the morning (10), Mom called the hospital to see when the in-house exam would be coming over. The nurse in Postpartum was less than helpful:
Nurse: "<mumble mumble mumble>, this is Cory".
Mom: "Is this Postpartum?"
Nurse: "Yeah." (Tone of Voice: What else would it be?)
Mom: "We're supposed to have a meeting with Homecare today, so I'm checking that it got scheduled."
Nurse: "They'll call." (Tone of Voice: Oh. Another over-acheiver Mom).
Mom: "Ok... Thanks."
Fast Forward to 3:40.
Mom, while on the line to another doctor about continuing her allery shot regimen, gets an incoming call. She switches over to it.
Nurse: "This is <Name of the nice withheld>
Mom starts crying. I mean it was just too much. All she wants to know is that her little baby is gaining weight, because just before we left the hospital told us that Grace was at the limit of normal weight loss.
Dad took the phone and got everything sorted out, got some calming information from the nice Nurse that helped mom feel better.
Now all this could have been avoided if Cory, I don't know, was pleasant. She could have said, "Hold on, I'll confirm the information in your file. If you don't hear from Home-care by X o'clock give us another call."
She didn't. She was just a mumbling unhelpful condescending opinionated Gah!
Nurse Fail!
So after all that, we decided to take our first trip out. We put Gracie in the car seat and headed down town to get some needed items. The family did great.
Then we went to Bed Bath and Beyond, and Dad started to freak out about the nasty chemical smells in the store, and started worrying about Grace's breathing, and should she be so folded over in car seat, and what if she's not getting enough air, and, and, and...
So we exited Bed Bath and Beyond with just one item, and Dad thought he might handle KMart better because it doesn't smell like chemicals as much. The worry dominoes had already started falling though, and it doesn't help that KMart gives him similar feelings as Wal*Mart as far as atmosphere (like I need a shower afterward). Dad really started freaking out. He just wanted to get Gracie home.
Mom rushed to find a couple needed items and then we left. We got home, and of course, Grace was fine, but it took Dad some time to recover.
Dad fail!
Mom's keeping up like a champ though. There's the occasional expected emotional swings, but nothing severe or drastic.
Gracie is doing great too. Today we'll find out how great when the nice nurse comes over at 10 am.... in 5 hours.
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