Falling In Love

The nurses told me that my hospital stay would be 48 hours, but that if I really wanted to I could go home in 24 hours. I jumped at that! Because of the H1N1 and it being the tail end of flu season, my hospital had adopted a policy that wouldn't allow Jack to come to the hospital at all- not even in the waiting room! Not only that, but I was only allowed 3 visitors- the SAME 3 visitors- the entire time I was there. It was very different from the never-ending parade of people that came when we were in the hospital with Jack. I was so disappointed that no one could come visit, and even though I was not happy about that policy it was very nice to be able to rest the next day and not worry about who was coming at what time.

After we had gotten settled in our postpartum room, mom ran to grab some dinner while Dave and I spent time with Samuel. We both missed Jack like crazy, though, so when my mom came back, she stayed the night with me and Sam while Dave went home to be with Jack Jack. When he brought Jack home, he called me so that I could talk to Jack, and it broke my heart! Poor Jack was crying so hard and kept telling Dave "We have to go get mommy from the hospital and bring her to home!" I didn't think that I could have missed him any more than I already was, but after that phone call I missed him ten times more!!! I couldn't wait to get home to him, and to introduce him to his baby brother!

The next morning my mom left so that she could watch Jack, and while I waited for Dave to return to the hospital I took that opportunity to take some pictures of Sam... while I was taking them a girl with a camera popped her head in and said "I was wondering if..." then she saw my camera. "Oh! You're not interested in having us take hospital portraits, are you?" No thanks :)

When Dave got back he kissed me and grabbed Samuel and just sat and stared at him- I could tell that he was as much in love with the little guy as I was!

When Samuel was first born, we all commented on how much he looked like Jack Jack did when he was born. Within the hour, though, he started looking less and less like Jack (and by default, Dave, as Jack is pretty much Dave's clone) and more and more like me! The next day, though, he was back to looking just like Jack and Dave.

See?


How about here?


Here?


But not his nose. His nose is MY nose!

Right before Dave got back to the hospital, I had gotten a phone call asking what meal I would like for my Celebratory Lunch! The meal would be for me and a guest, and it was fun to surprise Dave with lunch when he got there. The building that L&D was in was just recently built (Jack was one of the last babies to be born in the old building), and this was something new that they started when they switched buildings, so neither of us had been expecting it! When they brought the meal I couldn't resist taking a picture of it. They had two tiny bottles of sparkling cider and even a vase with a flower! Kind of cheesy, but so fun!

I had ordered salmon (I can't resist salmon!), and I couldn't get over how yummy it was! I was going on and on about how much I loved it, and then I looked up to see if Dave was enjoying his- he hadn't even taken a bite yet! He was a little distracted...

When he was finally able to tear his eyes away from our newest little one, he tasted his salmon and told me that I was crazy- that salmon was "just okay." Well, I had raved about that nasty looking cheeseburger, and the french toast they had sent me for breakfast, so we figured that I probably would have thought cardboard was delicious at that point! No matter though, I was in such a cloud of JOY still, and I was thrilled that it extended to making nasty cafeteria food taste good!

Around 2:00, the nurse came to take Samuel for his hearing test and informed me that everything was looking good and they were going to try to get us out of there by 4:00pm! I was so excited, and I wanted to be ready to walk out the door as soon as they gave us the green light! Dave and I went for a walk, and then I showered, packed our bags, noted how much better I felt (it really was incredible!) after this birth than I had after Jack's!

The nurse had said Sam's hearing test should take 30-45 minutes, but when 3:15 rolled around we were starting to worry. Finally the nurse brought him back to us and said that he had done great! She told us, though, that she had noticed Sam's circumcision was bleeding a little bit more than she would like to see, so she had called the doctor that did it so that she could come check it out. The doctor was making rounds at that time, so we had to wait 30 minutes for her to come by. When she did, she decided that she wanted to look at it under better lighting, and she took Samuel back to the nursery. 10 minutes later she came back and said that it hadn't been anything to worry about. She had used the silver nitrate to cauterize it, though, so she wanted to come back to check in an hour to make sure that had worked. By this time it was 4pm, the time we were supposed to have been discharged, so I called my mom to let her know we'd be another hour (I missed Jack!), and Dave and I sat around and watched the Olympics for an hour while we waited to get the okay. I couldn't wait to get Sam's Going Home Outfit on him and get out of there, but we definitely wanted to wait to make sure that everything was okay before we left.

Finally, the doctor and nurse came back and told us that Sam's bleeding had stopped, and it was okay for us to leave! We were thrilled! We got Sam dressed, popped him in his carseat for the first time, and we were out of there, on our way home to see our Jack Jack and introduce our boys to each other!