Bringing Home Braelyn!

As the sun streams into my office and my house is calm, quiet, peaceful, serene...I'm at awe that there's a sleeping baby, my sleeping baby, snuggled up warmly next to me in her Snuggamonkey!

Total silence except little taps on the keyboard and the sweetest little coos coming from little Braelyn.

Mom is playing games on her iPad, Neal is resting in bed (don't worry, I was just there too, but could sleep no more), and the dogs are in their usual positions, sleeping soundly on the futon in my office. It's simply a perfect scenario at this moment.

Bringing home Braelyn was filled with a lot of excitement, some hesitation, and of course some fear. What will I do now if something 'strange' happens, like her poop is weird, she spits up, the latches don't get better and my tits don't make milk right, or oh goodness she just cries differently?  Am I REALLY the one responsible for her?  Where's my nurses?  Where's my doctor?  Holy S**T what did we do!?!

Thankfully, the first day has been a lot better than expected.

Proud parents getting ready to take baby girl home!

As we got her all dressed and ready at the hospital yesterday on September 3rd, Braelyn beautifully handled her heel prick test (tests for like 40+ different dissorders), the nurse made sure she was in her car seat right, and we were discharged.  Just like that...released into this world as new parents.  Filled with the knowledge from our classes, lactation consultants, and nurses discharge teachings, we were off.  Up until we had Braelyn, I maybe had only changed 3 diapers in my 26 years of life.  This is an WHOLE new experience for me.

As Neal drove his work truck, my mom took myself and our little girl home in our truck.  Braelyn was great in the car ride home as I sat next to her in the back seat taking pictures and stealing kisses as we went home.

Car ride home!

Upon arrival at home, Walden and Sasha, our four legged babies, greeted her so sweetly with wet puppy noses and an attempt at far too many kisses which we had to politely dodge.

This was Braelyn as she first met the dogs...pictures of her and the puppies to come, they are just all on my mom's camera!

Then she just snoozed on Neal's chest forever and ever.  This will likely be my most favorite scene to witness for many months to come.

My mom mowed the yard as Braelyn, Neal and I rested before taking some family photos.

This is me 3 days post partum.  As you can see in the second picture, I still have my belly, it's now just all soft and giggly.  I don't hate it, it's kinda cozy for Braelyn actually!  I am going to wear a BellyBandit to help shrink the stomach and uterus back down, but so far my doctor was very impressed with how much my uterus has already shrunk.  I'll be posting weekly about my post partum recovery as well as about the weekly growth of Braelyn, this is just a little glimpse as this post is more about bringing her home than about mine and her changes. :)

When the evening arrived, we had some delicious veggie filled lasagna my mother made [it's a true masterpiece, so good and yet somehow filled with tons of veggies to help me well umm go bathroom too ;) ]  Yep, everything is all different as my intestines make their way back to their original 'homes' before Brae took over.  So far, so good.  Going to the bathroom doesn't hurt like I thought it would, but I'm not 100% comfortable yet either.  And yes, maxi pads, ice packs, and witch hazel (Tucks) are a women's bestie after giving birth!

As we ate our home cooked delight, we watched a movie, White House Down, where I got to oogle at Channig Tatum and those man muscles as Braelyn slept cozy in her Snuggamonkey.  It was getting late and I was exhausted, very much ready for bed, but Braelyn was still sound asleep, so we decided to wake her up for a feeding since it had been a while from her last.  She only ate for 20 minutes and was thankfully ready for bed.  This was much easier for me than the 2 hour feeding we had earlier on day 2.

Little Girl as we watched our movie!  So stinking cute!

Through her first night at home, we fed for those 20 minutes around 9:45 pm, an hour around midnight, 20 more minutes around 2:30am, 25 minutes at 6am, and 30 minutes around 9am.  It wasn't so bad at all for the first two feedings, but at the 2:30 one, she spit up SO much of my golden milk, I thought I might cry.  She did it again just after our 9am feeding too.  I'm SO thankful my mom was here, because when I showed her the spit-up, mom said, "Oh that's nothing, you used to cover the entire rag."  My mom helped lift my fears that Braelyn was going to not have enough of my golden milk and told me our little girl looked just fine, no more jaundice than what we should expect.

I still can't believe we had stretches of 2-3 hours of sleep last night!  It was amazing!  I have her sleeping in the bassinet on the pack-in-play beside the bed in our master.  I swaddle her up, put a towel on one side to slightly position her on her side since that's what we've found she likes best, and then I put one more blanket on top to snug her in so she can't wiggle out.  I'm hoping this will work for a bit longer, but am sure she'll soon want to be put to bed another way.

It's going on 2PM and she's been sleeping most of the morning with a few shorter feedings and then she just falls back asleep.  It's about time for me to go check her diaper, which will wake her back up, feed her, and hopefully she'll stay awake a little bit so I can play with my cutie some.

I want to thank all of our friends and family for their thoughts, prayers, and kind words during this transition Neal and I are making into parenthood.  We truly appreciate all of the support we've been given and I hope to keep you up to date on Braelyn as she grows with our family!