First Week Home

Our first week home with Catherine has had its ups and downs, probably like most first weeks with newborns.


Daniel got sick on Monday night. My mom called me while we were still at the hospital on Tuesday to tell me that Daniel had awoken with a high fever and congestion. He had a fever off and on for about 3 days, so he was fairly miserable. Now the fever is gone, but he still has a stuffy nose and a cough. This wouldn't be so bad except that my child is the world's worst at being able to blow his nose. So he wakes up screaming and crying when his nose is stuffed up. He's also just been super grumpy in general. We've been trying to teach him to leave the "grumpies" in his room before he comes out. We don't have this down yet!

Catherine has been really easy in some ways and difficult in others. She sleeps a lot, especially during the day. She likes to wake up from about 11:00 pm to 2:00 am.....we're working on this! She's been so sleepy that we're having a hard time feeding her. I know that you're supposed to feed newborns every 2-4 hours, but the first few days, we could really only get her to eat every 5-6 hours. We would try at 2, 3, 4 hours, but she was virtually impossible to wake up. Now we're closer to every three hours, but we have to strip her down to her diaper every time and then rub her with a torture device (a cold wash rag) every few seconds. This makes me feel terrible because she just shivers and cries then, and I've made David be the bad guy several times.


We took her to the pediatrician on Friday. She had lost 1/2 pound and because she was having some feeding issues, we'll go back on Monday just for a weigh-in. Hopefully she'll be trending the right way! The pediatrician gave us more info about her heart, and we made a follow-up appointment with Cooks for February 14th. We'll see how it goes!


Thankfully we've had a lot of help from both sets of grandparents. My parents stayed from Sunday through Friday. They cooked an obscene amount of food, and our freezer is full. They even made a turkey - it was like Thanksgiving! David's parents were here Sunday through Tuesday and then came back Saturday through Monday. They've also been a big help! Daniel is definitely enjoying all the attention he's received this week. It will probably be a big reality check when they leave and David returns to work tomorrow. I'm a little nervous about handling both kids by myself, especially since I either caught Daniel's cold or the one I was still getting over came back with a vengeance!