Hospital stay, visitors, and coming home

First of all, I want to congratulate Bridget on her precious new baby girl!  I am beyond excited for her and her family!  That Emily is so cute!!!


And now a few more things that I want to remember...


Instead of leaving the hospital 24 hours after Blakely's birth, we decided to stay an extra night.  We were lucky to have this option.  I have had many friends tell me to do that if I could so I decided to take the advice.  I was still in pain and had not gotten up very much...only to pee a few times during the night.  I also thought it would be a good idea if I needed any help breastfeeding.


The day after her birth was a complete whirlwind!  The anesthesiologist came in early that morning to take my epidural out.  I don't think I mentioned this, but they left it in since my platelets were low.  They wanted to see if they would come back up by the next morning.  The risk of taking it out is that my blood wouldn't clot and I would get an epidural hematoma...not good.  The had come up a little bit the next morning but not much.  


Anywho, they took it out that morning.  We decided to keep Blakely in our room most of the day. We had a steady stream of visitors throughout the day.  I was very glad to see every one and very thankful that we have so many people that love us....but it was seriously exhausting! I have also become quite the germaphobe.  So I was pretty crazy about making people wash their hands and wear the gown if they wanted to hold her. I mean between talking to people, breastfeeding every 3 hours (for almost an hour!), and then trying to go to the bathroom (which took a good amount of time) it became a stressful situation for me.


Here are some pics of our visitors in the hospital and in the first few days home.  These are all family members :)

My niece and nephew, Syble and Collier

 my sister in law, Kristen

 my brother in law, Marshall (Lonnie's brother)

 my dad

my Grand...this is her first great grandbaby

 my awesome mommy!  I hope I can be as good of a mom as she is....

my brother Matt....might be the first baby he's ever held!

my mother in law

Jenni, my aunt

At about three that afternoon I just burst in to tears.  I was ready to be alone...well not alone, but alone with my little family.  I told Lonnie this and he agreed.  We decided to take visitors until 6 and then we were done.  This is about the time that it really hit me that I had a daughter.  I couldn't stop crying and I just wanted to hold her and kiss her.  I'm not sure if it was all the visitors that did this to me or if it was just a crazy rush of emotions.  I'm sure it was emotions...because they are for real.  People told me I would be emotional but I just had no idea!  

So we kept her in the room with us after that and just snuggled with her and talked to her.  It was wonderful!  We sent her to the nursery after the 1100 feeding so we could try to get a little sleep.  I was actually able to sleep in the hospital but I am sure it had something to do with the pain meds.  


The next morning we were ready to head home.  I had decided that I just wanted it to be Lonnie and I to take her home.  No visitors or anything.  I just really wanted it to be special for us as a family.  Well about an hour before we were going to leave I changed my mind!  I wanted my mommy!  I had taken about 3 different outfits to choose from and I wanted her help deciding which one she should wear.  I also wanted her to take pictures of us outside of our house once we got home.  So, of course, she rushed up there to help me.  She is the best :)


Right when we were about to leave it was time to feed her again.  And let me tell you, this girl goes from happily asleep to hungry pissed in about 30 seconds.  I decided to feed her before we left so she wouldn't be screaming the whole ride home and in the pictures.


Then we were on our way home!

Yeah, she didn't like changing clothes...she has gotten better at this though :)

It was so nice to be home and it was an absolutely gorgeous day!  After we got home and settled my husband went to the grocery store.  He came home with all of my favorite things.  Butter Pecan ice cream, coffee cake, macaroni and cheese and peas (this is my comfort food...I always want it when I am sick).  When I saw what he got I just cried.  It was so sweet for him to get all of the food that make me happy and comfort me.  He has been absolutely AMAZING through this whole thing.  I didn't think it was possible to love him any more than I did before but I do.  More and more every day that I see him with our daughter.  

He was able to be off the first week home.  What incredible luck we had on that one!  It was his scheduled week off so it worked out perfectly.  It was a fantastic week and everything went so very smooth.  She ate well, she slept well, all was well!  

This second week has been MUCH harder.  More on that in my next post....