12:35 pm - Tuesday, May. 30, 2006
What the hospital was like...
It was tiring. There's never enough sleep in the hospital. Peanut needed to eat every two hours, and I was pumping milk first for about 20 minutes. That gave me about a half hour before I had to start the cycle again. During the day there was a line of people coming to poke the baby, or examine her, or worry us. She saw many specialists and had some extra blood drawn because at the time we didn't know why she was tiny. The little chin is a sign of some worrysome issues, so they did genetic tests and tests to see if she'd been sick and the usual tests. See the little cut marks on her heels in the last picture? That was just the blood draws they did from her feet, and you can't even see all of them in the picture. They also poked her arm, which was a very upsetting event. She and I were both crying by the end.
Sunday they let us go, which was great. At home we weren't constantly being confronted with worry, we were just a family with a new baby.
Simon's mom and stepdad had come all the way up north to take care of us. It was a relief just not to have to cook- and boy did they cook. We usually just cooked dinner, but they cooked every meal. And How.
Now, remember how the price of gas went up this winter? We had been getting by by keeping the heat down low, but Peanut needed warm, so she and I holed up in the bedroom with a space heater. I pumped- she slept and drank. We kept this up for weeks. Outside our room things were going on, but we weren't having much to do with it.
Luckily for me, having a 4 lb baby by cesarean doesn't take much out of you. A bit more major than having a mole removed, and it feels very serious when you have to cough or sneeze, but otherwise I got off easy.
Almost a week after she was born I felt a little funny and I got a pain in my side, so I checked my blood pressure and it sucked. It was higher than it had been before she was born. We went to see the midwives, who said "This lab is up, that lab is low, Go to the hospital right now and don't do anything else on your way". OK. Of course, when we get to the hospital they say "This lab is up, that lab is low, but you're probly fine, nothing to worry about."
?
There were 3 good things to come out of it.
1) I got to say thanks to the nurse who was there when they delivered Peanut. I had missed her on the day and was sad about it.
2) I got a free set of flanges for the pump, shich meant I didn't have to wash stuff every single time.
3) We found out we had Peanut in the wrong kind of carseat. When we had left the hospital they asked "Do you have a carseat?" Of course we did. On the way home I sat in the back with her, and she was so folded over I ended up taking her out of it because I was afraid she couldn't breathe. We bought a second, smaller carseat, but I still was worrying. Turns out tiny babys belong in a carbed- it looks like a washing bin with babystraps on the bottom. This was a much much better device.
During this time Simon was working in the evenings. Remember- we had a move coming up. He was still worried about money.
It is strange, because he was with me all day, but I missed him something fierce in those evenings. He had gotten out a Grateful Dead CD, and I listened to it in the evening like a little kid holds a teddy bear. It made me feel better to listen to simon's music.
Next up... My mother arrives.