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April 16, 2007
Eleanor at home
Categories: Personal
We brought our daughter home on Friday. So far it's been a tiring, wonderful, amazing thing to have her with us.
Now, for example, it's 7:50 AM. I've been up since 6:30 or so, staying up after I helped get Eleanor to sleep. The past few nights, she's been active from about 3:30 until 6:30 or so. She'll cry for her feeding and Sarah and I will both get up. I'll get her ready, checking her diaper, while Sarah preps with the Boppy and gets herself comfortable. Sarah will start to feed her while I prep the forumula. I'll deliver that to Sarah and then lay back down. Eleanor inevitably falls asleep while feeding (she usually feeds for 20-30 minutes), so Sarah will have to work to wake her back up for the formula. The feeding formula with the syringe takes at least an hour. After that, Eleanor will usually want more to eat from Sarah, will often need another diaper change, and will then be awake for a bit. I am only semi-conscious or asleep during most of this time, but will try and wake up to help change her again or get her to sleep.
Yesterday, Eleanor stayed asleep until almost 9:00, giving her mother a good 3 hours of sleep. Today, unfortunately, I am going to have to wake them both up soon. Eleanor's first visit to the pediatrician is at 10:30. I am praying he'll say it will be okay to take her off the formula suppliments. That will make things much easier. I think he will; she's clearly no longer jaundiced and, if her *ahem* excreatory functions are any indication, she's getting plenty of food. So hopefully she'll have gained some good weight and we'll be able to avoid the two hour feedings that have taken up most of our time lately.
I'll be the first to admit it's hard, especially for a guy who likes and needs his sleep. It's hard on Sarah, who wants to take care of everything, including trying to assure that I get my sleep, and entertain anyone who comes to visit. But when Eleanor looks at us with those dark eyes (we still can't figure out the color, though they look kinda dark blue now) or grabs our finger, we'd have it no other way.
More pics soon. We've only taken about 6,000 since she came home.
Posted by Nakia at April 16, 2007 07:50 AM