Our Hospital Stay and First Night at Home

We stayed in the hospital until Wednesday, August 12. We had lots of visitors, friends, family, people from church. Hadley stayed in the nursery at night but was in the room with us during the day. She had to be in the nursery from 7 to 9 every morning for the peditricians to round. And then they did another assessment at 2pm. I had decided to breastfeed so the nurse would bring Hadley to me every 2 to 2 1/2 hours at night and then come back and get her after she nursed. We got much more rest in the hospital than I expected. And would have gotten more except my nurses would come in every 2 hours to take my blood pressure and temperature and give me medicine.



By law, the baby has to stay in the hospital for 48 hours. So we couldn't leave before 3:55pm that afternoon. Hadley had lost weight down to 7.8. By that afternoon, she was beginning to get pretty fussy. My nurse discharged me right after lunch and the nursery got everything ready for Hadley go not long after that so we were literally just waiting on the clock. I got all our stuff packed up and then got Hadley dressed. I had bought her this beautiful pale pink smocked dress with matching bloomers that had her initials monogrammed on the butt. I wrapped in the white crocheted blanket that I came home from the hospital in. But after the wardrobe change, Hadley was upset. Now I know that she was hungry (my milk was still not in). I had forgotten to pack a pacifier and she was sucking on my finger like crazy. We asked the nurse for a pacy and that helped.

We stopped by Steven's grandfather's house to let him see his great-grandaughter. Then we arrived at home where both our families were waiting to welcome us home. We enjoyed a great supper of KFC chicken and then got ready for the longest night of our lives.

Our first night at home was spent fully awake the whole night holding our screaming daughter. More than once, I thought, what in world had we done. My milk had not come in yet and I can only assume she was starving. I tried nursing her about every hour and a half but nothing helped. Finally about 6:00 that morning, my mom woke up to find me lying in the den chair with Hadley asleep on my chest and me crying and exhausted. She took Hadley for a few hours that morning and I finally got a couple hours sleep. All I can say is thank you Lord for my mom!