For the most part, the remainder of our hospital stay was uneventful. Emmett’s blood sugar was finally above the borderline and it was staying above so they weren’t constantly pricking his little foot and I was up and moving around. I no longer had my catheter or IV so I was free to shower and wear REAL clothes, I felt almost human. 🙂
The worst part about being in a hospital is that the nurses are coming in to do their checks at the most inconvenient times, just as we had put Emmett down for a nap or just as I had decided to rest, they seem to have that radar for that. I do realize it is a necessity that they check on us and take our temps and my blood pressure, I just wish they had scheduled times so that you knew when to expect them and could plan for it. I hated the middle of the night checks, they made me twitchy but again, they are necessary.
We had one nurse, who overall wasn’t bad, but she wouldn’t allow us to turn all the lights off in our room. Seamus and I are used to sleeping in a very dark house, plus we were trying to teach Emmett what night and day were and they wouldn’t let us turn all the lights out. It was very frustrating, as if sleeping wasn’t difficult enough. Seamus was sleeping in a reclining chair and not a lazy-boy reclining chair, a plasticy hospital-like chair and I was in a hospital bed with a mattress made of plastic (for obvious reasons), so we weren’t sleeping well anyhow, add the light and a crying baby and sleep was difficult to come by. BUT we made it!
We didn’t have many visitors, but we wanted it that way. We wanted time to get to know our son before we were overwhelmed with people trying to hold him and asking how we were doing. My parents did visit while we were there and it was so touching to see them holding Emmett for the first time.
Since I had a c-section, our hospital required me to stay in the hospital an additional day for a total of 4. That’s a long time and if Seamus hadn’t been there with me, I think I would have lost my mind. He was amazing, though and I am so thankful for him! Finally after 4 (long) days and countless nurses bugging us it was time to go home. I was ecstatic! I couldn’t wait to get home and take care of my baby, in the place where he’d be living, away from the watchful eye of the nurses
I loved his going home outfit, adorable plaid overalls and a blue polo shirt. He looked like such a big boy even though he was so very tiny.
What was the first thing we did when we got home? Take pictures, of course!
Looking back, you can see how yellow he was. He had a very mild case of jaundice, so mild that our doctor didn’t even mention it to us until we were leaving and just said to keep doing what we were doing and it would go away all on it’s own. I wasn’t worried and it definitely did go away, I just didn’t notice then his fallow skin tone.
Once we were home, we quickly realized that we had no clothes that would fit him at his current size. Throughout my entire pregnancy everyone kept telling me what a big baby I was going to have and to not bother buying many newborn outfits bc he wouldn’t ever wear them. So I didn’t buy ANY newborn clothes, we had his going home outfit and 3 plain white onesies that were given to us by Grandma and Grandpa M last Christmas. Emmett wasn’t super tiny but he definitely was too small to fit into 3 month sized clothing. Thankfully my wonderful husband was willing to run out and grab some newborn sized clothing that we could put our boy into. In the meantime we put him in one of the plain white onesies and covered him up good. We settled him in his bunny chair and I laid down on the couch, while daddy went and ran some errands. Emmett took a nice long nap, so mommy did!!
If you’ve never purchased baby items before then you have no idea how easy it is to go overboard. Everything is so cute and tiny and would be just perfect for your little bundle of joy. I say all this because Seamus came home with bags of new stuff for Emmett, not all clothes but lots and lots of stuff.
The rest of that first day home was pretty perfect. I was still flying on the bliss of new mommy-hood and all of my pregnancy hormones hadn’t yet left my body, I was feeling good, happy.