The Eigth Floor

Our new home for the next 48 hours would be the 8th floor of the hospital. After I could finally feel my legs again (this took a few hours) we were moved up to the 8th floor. It was about 10:30pm by the time we got up there. When we arrived up there Nathan was given his very first bath and was weighed, measured and checked out again. Nathan had a really fast heart rate so they checked him over and over again. Normal is between 40-60 and his was in the 80's or 90's. They said it normally goes down within 4-6 hours but it still hadn't gone down. They thought they might have to take him for a little while to test him but we were lucky because right at about 6 hours it had gone down to about 62 bmp and he was able to stay with us. We were given instructions, Nate was checked out and then we were pretty much left alone to try to get some rest. I don't think they came back in to check on him until about 4am and he was really cold. They asked us to do skin-to-skin with him to get his body temperature back up. Brian held him and then he was doing fine. We spent the next 2 days getting used to our life long role as parents. Changing diapers, attempting to swaddle him (we are getting better at this), feeding, dealing with the little and not so little cries, and everything else that goes along with a baby. We sat around a lot and Brian had to leave for breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday to get us food. The Naval hospital isn't really open on the weekends so I'm pretty sure they made all of the meals for the weekend Friday before they left. They were all terrible. And, of course, they don't feed Brian. We were so ready to go home though- fast food and take out get really old really quickly. Also, sitting in the same room gets very repetitive. Our experience at the hospital was a good one though. They didn't bother us much at all. They came in to check on Nate usually around 10pm and then again at 4am but other than they we were able to try to get some sleep as much as possible. It was good not to be woken up every two hours or so by people- although Nate took on the role of waking us up. :) On Sunday at 4pm we were finally discharged from the hospital- such an exciting time! We now embark on our newest journey- being parents at our own home with no help....