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.
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.
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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Well, Jean's second day of life went well - she passed the hearing test, after a few attempts which were spoilt due to her or other babies in the room making too much noise for the test to work.
I seem to have roughly mastered changing nappies:
Alaric and Grandad Pym changing Jean
And Sarah is finding nursing chairs very helpful in breastfeeding with her shoulder problems:
Sarah and Jean in nursing chair
Jean Rose Pym was born at 6:50pm on the 29th of August, weighing 8lb 10oz and measuring 21+5/8" long - in sensible units, that's 3.9kg and 55cm.
Which is quite large for a baby; Sarah had an awful time pushing her out, but managed it!
Here's the photos:
Sarah and Jean just born
Jean wrapped in blankets
Jean and Michelle
Jean, Michelle, and Uncle David
The afterbirth (not for the squeamish)
Jean | alaric | 
Sat 3rd Sep 2005 9:45 pm | 
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