First Week Home April 23-25

The first night we had baby Brodie home was exhausting. He slept relatively well in the hospital but was probably just recovering from his entrance into the world. At home he was awake and hungry. We survived our first poop-tastraphe early in the morning. I gently woke up Thomas by screaming from Brodie's room for him to come and help me! He had his first true bowel movement of black tar that spanned from the top of his shoulders to in between his toes. It looked as though we had dipped him feet first into a tar pit. We did the best we could with a wipey wipe down and confusedly filled the blue plastic baby tub in the sink for the first time at 6 a.m.  Crises averted we set to the pattern of eating, diaper changes and more eating.

He spent a lot of time without clothes on his first week home because we changed diapers so much it wasn't worth the time/effort or his crying to waste it on putting clothing on something that was going to immediately soil it anyway.

We also spent a lot of time starting at this tiny little human wondering how on earth we made something so completely adorable and exhausting.

 

My milk finally came in around midweek but our breast feeding efforts only became more frenzied. At this point each latch on his part caused a spastic kick of my leg to endure the excruciating feeling of hot lava pouring through my nipples. I could feel every ounce of fluid pulled through cracked and chapped skin. He needed food and I needed rougher and tougher nipples. 

We had our first pediatrician appointment on Thursday. He had dropped a few ounces below his birth which was expected but otherwise had a clean bill of health. We scheduled his circumcision for the next week and went home. The rest of the week was a blur. Friends and family made visits but I can't for the life of me remember who and when. At this point we were averaging a feeding every hour with an at best 2 hour nap here and there on a 24 hour cycle.