Day 2: Coming Home

 The sleeplessness has already set in.

After blogging last night, I went to the hospital and made sure Jen got a few hours of sleep while I held, rocked, and fed baby. At 3:30 I headed home. All told, I got 3 hours of sleep last night. Add the one hour nap in yesterday, and that's looking par for the course.

Also, I'm not doing pictures today. I took a bunch. Will probably paste them tomorrow, but I'll explain in a bit why I'm not putting them up today.

I got up and hugged and talked to Sabrina before she left on the school bus. Made a quick run to the store to pick up a furnace filter (you need to change those periodically or your A/C won't work? what?) and got Betty off on her bus and Edgar starting schoolwork for the day.

Then, I left for the hospital one last time. We got to spend a pretty leisurely morning as the doctors and pediatricians did their last checks on mom and baby. I got some sporadic Z's in on that uncomfortable hospital couch.

 I've heard so much parenting advice on so little sleep that I can't make sense of it all... I shouldn't give baby Oxycodone more than 4 times a day? Jen needs to fill 3 diapers tomorrow? Who should or shouldn't I shake?

It took us an awful long time packing up from the hospital. Because Ida is a few weeks early, they had us give her some donor breastmilk to supplement Jen's, and then plan to feed her formula and breastmilk over the next few days. So, they hooked us up with lots of bottles of formula.

My sister Brenda came by the hospital with a gift basket, and got to hold baby. I have some cute pictures somewhere. Brenda gave me paper and markers to make a chore chart for the kids. More on that later.

As I was walking out of the hospital on one of my thousand trips to the car, I overheard a young mother begging the front desk nurse for formula samples. She said "I can't afford formula in the grocery store, and all of a sudden I need it???". Once the nurse left, I hooked her up with most of our supply. We can buy our own if we need more.

We strapped baby in the carseat (same one that Betty had), and headed off for home. Jen and I got burgerville to celebrate.

Home was cool, but full of high-strung kids. Apparently, bringing a new baby into the home just gave the older 3 something to fight about and over. It was Edgar and Betty vs Sabrina, or Edgar and Sabrina vs Betty, and lots of crying and blame. Not the peaceful homecoming I expected.

Also, our home is a mess. I have some plans on how I'm going to change that now that I'm not working 11 hours a day, but it's going to take some time to look anything less than awful.

I got another hour-and-a-half nap in, and woke to take Betty to soccer practice, only to find Betty crying, holding Ida, and refusing to go to soccer practice. Whatever.

We had a friend from our church bring pigs in a blanket for dinner tonight. Yum and much appreciated.

After dinner, I did some laundry and made yet another grocery run for medicine for Jen. 

I took a short break and finished my book: Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens by Brandon Sanderson.

I got the girls tucked into bed. Edgar insisted there were bugs in their room and wouldn't go up there. I didn't see any. At that point, I was at the end of my tether, and I didn't care.

At some point, Jen and Ida decamped to our bedroom, had a substantial nap, and then woke up. I fielded a lot of (absolutely reasonable) requests for things to make Jen and baby comfortable.

I also attempted to make a chore chart with the paper and markers Brenda gave me. Her idea was to offer the kids dollar bills as an incentive to do chores. Knowing my kids, how money doesn't motivate them and they don't even keep their own money, just ask me to hold it for them, I tried to improve on that. I bought some big bags of assorted candy at the store today, and I stapled ziplocs of candy to the chore chart-- anyone who unloads the dishes gets a Milk Dud. Taking out the trash gets a Heath. I've got a substantial ziploc for anyone who deep cleans a toilet. Several others.

Anyway, my chore chart idea was stronger in theory than in practice. I made several attempts to tape the chart (with attached candy) to the wall, but all ended in failure, with the remants of the chore chart in a pile on the floor.

All the while while doing this, Jen was asking for more (completely reasonable) things. Like making her a smoothie, and getting 15 separate things we had at the hospital, packed, and now need right away. Each request got harder and harder to deal with. 

At one point, Jen asked me to do some Alex self-care this evening. Yikes. one more thing on the list. I gave it some sincere thought and decided that the thing that's giving me the most stress in my life is that phone with Jen texting me. So, I'm practicing Alex self-care. I left the phone in the kitchen. I don't plan to look at it until morning. I'm definitely not going to go through the pictures I took on there today. I think I'm going to go to sleep downstairs and leave Jen and Baby to whatever-- at least for the next few hours. If she needs me, she can holler. I'm right here. I'm practicing self-care. Goodnight.