Our Time in the Hospital

So after all our fun in delivery Brynn, Mike and I spent the next 4 nights in the hospital. I have to say thanks again to Mike for staying there the entire time. Now some might expect that he would just do that, but take a peek at the following picture (ignore me looking like hell) …

Mike’s accommodations were a mat on the floor under the air vent. We had a shared room, but no one was in the next bed, however, it meant that if they brought anyone in at any time of the day Mike would have had to leave, and that he had to use the bathroom down the hall and had no place for him to shower. I think I would have had a meltdown if he had had to leave since it took me a good 40 minutes to get in and out of bed for a couple days after my surgery and standing / walking was epic. We did put ourselves on a list for a private room, but there was a wait list and it was $160 per night (we did manage to get one for the last night). On the bright side, on occasion Mike managed to take care of the baby in the lounge and play a little Nintendo when she was resting on his lap. :)

In general nowadays you spend 2 days in the hospital; however, we were there a few extra days for Brynn. Here’s a lesson for all those first time mothers out there. When you think your baby isn’t doing as well as they should and you get the rolling eyes of the nurses, etc because you’re a first time mother and therefore you must be overreacting, stick to your instincts. They wanted to discharge us after two days and I had been mentioning to the nurses that I didn’t think she looked very good, but no one was really listening, so finally they decided to weigh her. Normally they would do it before her discharge, but I think they wanted to pacify me, so they did it the night before. In any case it turned out she had lost over a pound, or 12% of her birth weight… so NOW they listened to me. Apparently anything around or over 10% is not great.

Really? You mean something that’s 8.5 pounds shrinking over a pound in a day and a half is bad? Geez. She looked pretty scrawny, sorry honey, but it’s true. So they contacted our doctor and she was put on a formula supplement to help her gain some strength (even just to try feeding). The good thing is she responded well to the formula and it only took about half a day for her to get off it again. Although I do have to say, formula diapers are WAY nastier than breastmilk diapers, not that I was dealing with them at that point (yey Mike for doing all the changing).

So after a couple of days we were ready to head home. Here’s a shot of Brynn in her traveling outfit, but still with her security anklet on. Yup, just born and already being tracked.

It was very exciting to head home, yey bed, yey shower, yey!