Home

Well, I went in for a feeding yesterday around 2 and the charge nurse was there and basically told me she saw no reason to keep the baby any longer! So I fed her and we had a somewhat frantic chain of events as they worked to make sure they could get us all discharged. Gary (who had just gotten to work) got the rest of the day off and within an hour and a half, we were walking out the hospital with our little girl! It's been fun having her home, but it's been really hard, too. She fussed a lot at about 2:30 last night, which made mom and dad a little grumpy. I think she fed every two hours. I went in to the doctor today, and she weighed about an ounce more than she did at birth - and just the day before the hospital told me she wasn't quite back to her birth weight! Could be inconsistent weighing, but I personally think it's cause she ate so darn much. Which is okay, she just took a long time to feed at night (and I wasn't very quick to wake her, since I was falling asleep myself), and then I'd sleep for about an hour and she'd wake up and want to eat again.

I've come to the conclusion that she associates waking with eating. I almost always see some feeding cues when she's awake, but it's still fun to see her wide awake. The lactation specialist/nurse told me that I really should let her sleep a lot of the time she wasn't eating, so it's been hard for me to want to play or hold her for long periods of time (except... while she's eating...). I think, though, that she mostly needs it the next day or maybe two to make sure she recovered well from whatever was keeping her in the hospital.

I really should be napping, because I'm not really looking forward to tonight and waking up. Maybe she'll eat quicker and sleep a little longer? I can hope. :-) My consolation is that she won't do this forever.... I hope it won't last more than a week or two, or that we'll at least have more of an idea of her schedule pretty soon. I guess we were finally initiated as parents! I kind of miss that hospital sleep room, though... ;-)