Life

I started a post last week, at 8 days old, but that’s about as far as it gets. And I thought I’d gotten bad at blogging and commenting before Sprocket was born!

Tomorrow he will be two weeks old, we have been home for just over a week now which has been great. The birth story will come, I promise, but for now a quick catch up:

• K and Sprocket were released from hospital on the Friday afternoon, after some drama and bullying from the night staff the last two nights so we were more than ready to leave. (Yes the hospital visiting rules for partners is a bit draconian, partners are allowed in two hours earlier than regular visitors so I did get to spend most of the day there but the nights were tough.)
• Once they were admitted to the hospital, K and Sprocket’s care was transferred to the hospital obstetricians and midwives for the duration. Our midwife was still accessible to us as a support person, but she did not have any rights or involvement in the direct care. Luckily one of the midwives we had on Tuesday was in the delivery suite on Wednesday, and she has attended a couple of homebirths with our C, our midwife, and clearly had a lot of respect and dare I say a slight case of hero worship for her. This was awesome because C was seamlessly involved in the immediate pre and post op care which I don’t think would have been the case at all otherwise. Had we known that we would end up in the hospital we probably wouldn’t have even interviewed C at the start as she is primarily a home birth midwife, but she was amazing to have at our sides and I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing a better job of it.
• From there, we stayed at a birthing unit for two nights which was just amazing. It was like a hotel suite, with meals delivered from one of K’s favourite restaurants, and a midwife just down the hall available 24/7. When we got there, our midwife was waiting for us with the duty midwife who happened to be the one that we met and loved when ours was away in February. Immediately after we walked into our room, we could feel the tension pouring off our shoulders – it was such a great way to ease into going back home.
• Home has been a big adjustment, he’s not a fan of night sleeping, and would prefer to sleep on one of us than in his hammock. He’s just now going through his second growth spurt, which means feeding on demand every hour last night so poor K didn’t get much sleep. There’s little I can do to help when he’s like that, except for take him down to the lounge for an hour or so in between so K can get some rest, but I’ve been a bit sick as well – hopefully the ‘erbs from Mr CMM will kick in soon so I’m more use tonight!
• One of the cats spent the first couple of days ignoring him, but glaring at us and pacing when he was crying. The other, and nicest, cat has been trying to get as close to us as possible when we’re holding him. The dog has been awesome – she likes to check on him often, but just comes up and sniffs him gently then backs off. They all get perturbed when he has a real good scream (usually when we do him the indignity of removing his pants to change him), although they are much less worried about it now than at first.
• He is a very loved boy. We have been very spoiled by many people in our lives, and it makes me so happy that he is going to grow up knowing how wanted, loved and welcome he is.
• He had his one week pediatrician visit, the doctor was good with Sprocket but we didn’t like him much after he started in with not one but two lectures in as many minutes (including one about K using chinese herbs during pregnancy when she was sick – apparently he knew a 90 year old woman once that had bone marrow cancer after using dragon’s claw all her life……ummm…yeah?).
• He has two webbed toes (in all three of our families – my Mum freaked out when I told her because apparently it’s quite prevalant in our extended family and she couldn’t work out how it came through to him lol). It won’t affect his walking or anything like that so any treatment would be purely cosmetic so we will leave this decision up to him when he’s older.
• He also has a tongue tie, grade two which is up to us whether to treat it or not. Apparently it shouldn’t cause speech difficulties but of course they can’t guarantee anything . He has also had some issues latching, although not too bad, so we are going to see a lactation consultant about possibly snipping it.
• As of today, he is back above his birth weight which is fantastic. He still has some jaundice but is very alert and waking to feed all the time so our midwife isn’t worried about it.
• And..drum roll.. K is already back under (2kg under in fact) her pre-pregnancy weight. Go diabetic diet and fluid retention! As soon as the swelling left, so did the extra kilos!
• We are not looking forward to next week, when I go back to work. It’s been so nice having this time together (and seriously I couldn’t have coped with working anyway lol). It’s the longest we’ve had since our big trip to England/Europe just before we starting ttc 4 years ago.
• BD is staying with us right now which is going well too. I think we were a little apprehensive just because we were so tired and wanting to make the most of each other and this last week but it’s been cool. More on that later – could be a whole post in itself if I ever get the motivation!

Honestly, it feels like all the early pregnancy scares, the waiting, the dreaming, even the hospital stay was so long ago. At the same time, the time we’ve had together has gone quickly, but we’re making the most of it while we can. Life is not, and will never be, the same again – but in a lot of ways it feels like he’s been with us forever and we can’t imagine life without him.