Day 3 (by alaric)
Today was really hot, so Jean was a bit miserable. We took off all of her clothes apart from her nappy, and had her sitting in Sarah's crossed legs so she felt secure to cheer her up, but wasn't getting much of Sarah's body heat, and had a fan going and the windows open. After a while of this (and it took some trial and error to find that combination of cooling effects), she cheered up again and started taking an interest in the world once more.
Sarah went to the toilet up the hall and nearly passed out, so had to be rescued by nurses, by which point Jean was hungry so we had to get her breastfeeding while Sarah was still dazed, and I forked Sarah's dinner into her and passed her sips of water until she had recovered. They're not discharging her from the hospital yet, since she's really not very well - still too weak to hold Jean on her own for very long, and she can't lift her out of her cot without help, and her feet are still swollen (which apparently a side effect of the pre-eclampsia during the labour) - they're also wanting to keep her for a bit of monitoring since she had pregnancy-induced hypertension during the labour, with her pulse hitting 180 at times.
I was scared I would lose both her and our child, so imagine the bottomless depth of my relief when they both made it through OK...
Anyway, all this means that Sarah won't be coming out for a while, and when she is out, she will still be staying at her parent's house in Essex until she's strong enough to travel to our home in Gloucestershire, so I am still going to be commuting back and forth at great expense - on my own in Gloucs working and missing my family for a week, then comnig to Essex for a week with them but only being able to work on my laptop (and the RSI is starting to act up...)
And I'm sick of letting everyone down due to my current situation. I've been missing deadlines due to Sarah originally being in hospital during the final months of the pregnancy, then missing deadlines due to moving house, then missing deadlines due to helping get Sarah's parent's house ready for Sarah to stay in while recuperating, then (and this one I don't feel bad about) missing deadlines due to the labour and new-parent-settling-in-period - I now want to just GET ON WITH LIFE and start working again rather than missing more deadlines due to commuting back and forth.
After all, the savings I accumulated for all this moving and baby-raising have run out, and I need to get back to working.
Anyway, here's today's photos. Do excuse the stubble - I actually just came to Essex for the weekend, but Sarah started showing early signs of labour (that went away), then the real labour itself, so have been here for nearly two weeks, without my shaving gear... although today I bought some disposable razors, and have now sliced my horrible face-fur off!
Thu 1st Sep 2005 12:00 am 1 Comment
Other Links to this Post
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Subscribe
By Derek, Thu 8th Sep 2005 @ 7:10 am
Ah, the joys of the first one. We spent five days in the hospital with the first one, letting the nurses do all the hard work. They were even willing to keep her longer, but she finally got the hang of the basic Mom stuff and so we all went home. Max spent that entire summer naked since it was so warm, and had a fabulous time about it.
The other kids are wimps and had to wear shirts. Oh well.