Bringing a new baby home is 3 parts amazing, 1 part terrifying. As the time drew closer for us to be discharged from the hospital with our new little bundle named Gabriel, I started getting emotional. We were going to be ON OUR OWN with the little guy. No more people coming in to check his vitals and mine; no more reminders of when to take the medications they’d given me; no more check-ups and lessons from pediatricians and lactation specialists; and no more dialing a phone number to order off a menu and, 45 minutes later, have food brought to me in bed.
On the positive side…no more people coming in to check his vitals and mine; no more poking and prodding from nurses and doctors right when Gabriel was in the middle of sleeping; no more wondering if what I ordered from the menu was going to taste good or not; no more bed that shifted with every shift I made; Rich could finally sleep in something large enough to hold his entire body instead of the pull-out bed that he had to sleep diagonally in so that he would fit!
Even so, I suddenly realized how luxurious all this help from the nurses had been. Would we survive on our own?
While bringing a new tiny baby home is terrifying, we’ve also had some funny new parent moments. The first night with Gabriel, with both Rich and I already super tired from the 24 hours of labor and then the hours spent awake after that between nurses, feeding Gabriel, and being in awe at the tiny guy, we couldn’t figure out why the baby kept crying. I kept feeding him, and he kept eating, but it got to the point that he was eating tiny bits at a time. Surely, he wasn’t THAT hungry? Finally, we remembered the little man had a diaper on that we hadn’t checked yet (nurses had been great at changing his diaper every time they came in!). OOPS. One changed diaper later, and Gabriel was content and ready to sleep!
A couple of days ago, we tried out the bouncy chair we’d bought for Gabriel and Rich had put together. It vibrates to help soothe a baby, and has various settings for sounds, including sounds that mimic the womb (basically swooshing sounds). We put Gabriel in to see what would happen. Rich got the chair vibrating and turned on the swooshing sounds. Gabriel suddenly lifted both feet off the chair where the vibrating was happening and kept them up almost the entire time! He finally set his feet down – but gingerly at first.
Last night, Gabriel was having a fussy night. He wasn’t sleeping very long between meals, which meant his parents weren’t getting much sleep, either. Rich finally got to sleep around 3am, and about 90 minutes later, Gabriel was awake again. Rich had been getting up to get him and bring him to me each time to allow me to stay in bed to help with the recovery from delivery pains, and so I poked Rich. No movement. I shook him a bit, and he stirred. I called out, “Baby fetcher!” Rich replied, “Bring the baby!” and promptly went back to sleep. After being a little confused at his reply and realizing he wasn’t moving, I chuckled and got up to get Gabriel.
Later, as I was walking around with Gabriel, wondering why he was so bright-eyed, the little guy suddenly made a squeak and choked a little bit. I held his face up to mine and gave him a puzzled look, asking him, “What was THAT?” Suddenly I realized he was giving me the same exact puzzled look back! I started laughing – these are the kinds of things that happen that make me think, “Yes, this is definitely my child!”
