First Night at Home

I spent all morning and most the afternoon in the SCN on Wednesday, the 30th. When Tom arrived after spending a few hours at work, a nurse went over a checklist with us - Car seat safety, how to tell if he's ill, how often to feed him, etc. After that, we wanted to ensure Cole was coming home as close to 6pm as possible so we made it a point to remain in our seats (okay, stare down the nurses/doctors!) and be available for all additional paperwork/questions- Around 5:30pm we got clearance, his IV/monitors were removed and we were told we could dress him in the outfit we brought - It was our first time getting to change his diaper and dress him, so it took us awhile... but we finally got him ready! I held him and walked over to the nurses to sign the final paperwork, pay our bill and find out the next step in the process. They laughed at me. There was no next step... Nothing to sign, bill would arrive in the mail and no one would escort us out. You simply hold your baby and walk out the door! We felt like we were breaking out of prison..!

RUN!

"Welcome Home" surprise from Uncle Mike & Aunt Sarah



Flowers from Dad



In some ways it was a blessing the nurses had him for those 60+ hours (little more sleep... having his fever closely monitored...) but we had some troubles later in the evening not knowing what sort of habits they created and not having a clue what his hungry/tired/over-stimulated cues were. We soon realized I wasn't producing what he needed and I was starving him... We tried Plan B which was giving him the formula the nurses provided but it wasn't agreeing with his tummy... He ended up screaming for hours and I couldn't help but picture our neighbors busting through the front door and killing all three of us - Complete mess! Thank goodness I had the pediatrician appointment set for 9am the next morning. We stumbled in greasy, bags under our eyes, holding a cranky/famished baby and I'm sure she wanted to call the authorities and get him new parents! She took one look at his chart and saw they were giving him a different brand of formula, which also explained some of our latching issues. Thanks, nurses! Really appreciate those phone calls every 2-3 hours giving us the impression I was the only one feeding him AND following the birth plan!

I'm now exclusively pumping and I feel much better seeing the exact ounces he's consuming and he's clearly MUCH happier!

The food coma that occurred after the appt/new formula!