Brothers, Visitors, and Presents {Hospital Days}

Once we got Rory back late on Thursday night and I had fed him again, Kenny and I decided to let him spend the night in the nursery so we could try to get some sleep. He was picked up around 2:30am, and we hoped to get a couple of hours of rest before he needed to eat again. Imagine our surprise when he still hadn’t shown back up at 7:30am!

I called the nursery and was told Dr. N was with him doing her first evaluation. I guess he was just so tired from the day before that he conked out for almost five straight early morning hours. That certainly worked for us!

Dr. N came by our room after checking Rory over and said he was doing great. He had passed his hearing test, received a standard dose of Vitamin K, and his APGAR score was 9 out of 10 at both one minute and five minutes after birth. She said she’d be back the next morning to look him over one more time and to discharge him.

Rory ended up being awake a lot of Friday, even after Dr. S did his circumcision at lunchtime (which went just fine). He was gone for about an hour and seemed to be in a fairly good mood the rest of the afternoon. He also cooperated with us while his newborn pictures were being taken (separate post coming soon).

However, that night was just awful. He refused to eat at 9 and 11pm, and the nursery didn’t keep him because he was so fussy. So he was in the room with us. Every time we’d try to lay him in his bassinet, he’d start squirming and crying. Since he didn’t want to eat, we didn’t know what else to do. We did ask for a pacifier from the nursery, but that didn’t seem to help. We contemplated asking for a bottle of formula, too, but ultimately didn’t end up having to resort to that, even though both of us would have been way okay with doing so if it would have helped.

After being paged by the nursery and alerted of our situation, one of the lactation nurses came by our room around 1:30am. Stephanie was a huge help. She was very patient and calm and helped me encourage Rory to feed, which was most definitely the problem. The little screech monkey was just hungry. He was thrown off from the stress of his day and had simply worked himself up too much. But with Stephanie’s help and guidance, he finally did eat. She took him back to the nursery for us around 3am so we could sleep. When he came back 4 hours later (!), he was a different baby: much happier and calmer. Whew.

Amidst all of that craziness, we also had a number of people drop by to say hi throughout the day. Nola, Nopsi, Grandma, Aunt E, Karen, Bridget, Aunt Dede, Uncle Dean, and Ashley all stopped in to meet the new little one and bestow some thoughtful gifts upon us. Thank you all for taking time out of your day to visit!

But perhaps the most special visitor of all was big brother Riley. Grandma brought him up to the hospital after his music class that morning so he could finally meet his little brother. It was so good to see his little face; I had missed him.

Riley thought Rory was Kate at first; then again, she’s the only baby he’s really ever known, so I couldn’t blame him. But he eventually got that it was Sprout. He greeted him warmly, presented him with Macaroni (the name he finally agreed to for the black bear), and even gave him a few kisses. Sweet boy.

Rory and I were both discharged the next day, and we left the hospital with our new bundle of joy around lunchtime. Life was about to get infinitely more complicated!