Day 6 (by alaric)

Last night we slept well, since we have found that some formula milk in a bottle satiates her for a good six hours - so one of those before bedtime, when she's starting to get dissatisfied with Sarah's breast output for the day and would otherwise start wailing every half hour for more, leads to a relatively quiet night with only one or two interruptions.

This is very welcome, although I do slightly miss her falling asleep on me! It's nice to be wanted, eh?

Anyway, the midwife (well, another midwife) came today, and after a routine check-up took some blood spots for the Guthrie Heel-Prick test, which appears to be a genetic screening for a range of diseases that, if picked up early, can be treated effectively. This is a good thing.

Looks like we'll be heading home to Gloucs on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. I eagarly await living in my home with my family again, and getting on with pressing work...

And Jean passed a little bit of stool this morning! Then a lot more, later on. So the constipation scare is over. Phew.

Wooow, I feel so grown up getting worried enough about baby's bowel movements to make INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY POSTINGS about it! Welcome to middle age, eh?

Anyway, today was our first outdoor day with Jean; we went to visit various friends in the area. Since there were four adults plus Jean plus a wheelchair and crutches (for Sarah) and a pushchair (in case we saw an opportunity for a stroll), we took two vehicles - Sarah's parent's car plus our van.

Vans are great for this kind of thing since you can fill the back up with wheelchairs, pushchairs, and so on without all the hassle of packing a car boot up. And the three front seats mean you can have the baby seat in the middle (which is a very safe place for it), Mum to the left, and Grandad driving, meaning conversation between the adults is easy and the baby can be entertained easily.

Turns out (like her dad) that she seems to like the van, and dozes off to sleep in it, despite the loud 2.5L Diesel engine.

Baby on board van

Day 5 (by alaric)

The midwife came today! She said she didn't think the stairs were safe, and told Sarah not to carry the baby up and down them, and to avoid using them herself, since she's still weak on her legs. And she said the room was too small and cluttered, since Sarah needed space to stretch and walk about without having to clamber over piles of stuff, in order to avoid developing thrombosis.

We told her we had a nice house in Gloucestershire waiting for us, and asked when would be a good time to move to avoid complications with the postnatal care. Apparently, ten day's time is when midwife care switches over to health visitor care, so about then.

Yippee!

The midwife will come again tomorrow to see how things are. Which is good, since at the time of writing, Jean's not... uh... passed a stool in about 20 hours. The midwife this morning said a bit of constipation is to be expected if we're having to supplement breast feeding with bottle feeding, but it worries me nonetheless, not least because when she DOES let rip it's probably going to be a bit major

This morning / last night, Jean seemed to decide that the only way she would sleep was if I was holding her - put her down, and she'd wail within a few tens of seconds. This was most endearing, since I ended up with my shirt off holding my baby daughter to my chest watching her listen to my heartbeat and my breathing and dozing off to sleep, but by 4am I was a bit tired and achy, so after a bit of experimentation we found that she would sleep happily in the gap between Sarah and I in bed facing each other, which was also super-soppy.

Zzzzz.

Day 4 (by alaric)

She'd not had a very happy night and morning, keeping wailing until breastfed, then giving up after a while and wailing again - in the end, the nurses fed her from a bottle of formula milk, which she guzzled down then slept. The same happened in the day when I was visiting, but after much more failed attempts to breastfeed, so she was really worked up and miserable by the time we tried a bottle - and after having been wailing for hours, she then slept like a log for many hours, which was worrying in itself; I had to kept checking her breathing...

But then we got to take her home! So we're now settling in at Sarah's parent's place. She's annoyed with them since, a month after she first moved in here due to having to leave the flat but not being able to come with me, there was still only one room nearly ready. She's worred that the midwife, who will visit tomorrow, will think the place is unsafe to raise a child and - horror of horrors - invoke Social Services to Take The Baby Away.

So I won't be getting much sleep tonight as I continue to help clean up somebody else's house. Sigh.

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.

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