Last of Ellie's Birth

 This is a picture I took sitting in my bed in the hospital in the middle of the night.  I was so hot, they gave me a fan.  Anyhow, this photo captures exactly how it feels in a hospital in the middle of the night.  Dark and muted, feeling like night but also endlessly turned "on"...the hum of staff doing their work.  There was some other people on the floor and I was up a lot trying to get Ellie to eat more.

The next morning, Friday, the day I went home, I had the pediatrician, Dr. Varnum (he works in the same practice as mine...he's a bit odd...when I asked if Dr. Liepke was coming the first morning he was very serious and asked I wanted her paged) check her out.  He said that she had lost a pound, but she was just under the point where they worry.  He pointed out that at seven pounds five ounces is a normal baby, very serious.  I had to laugh to myself...I wasn't used to a "normal" baby.  They gave me this syringe thing in which you slide a tube in the side of her mouth and formal comes out of it while she is nursing...supposed to keep her trying.  It did.  I felt a lot better...like she was getting food, but I hadn't given up on nursing.

Not sure at what point I took these photos in that time period, I think that night.

Poor Ellie, her eyes were so affected by the gel they put on their eyes after they are born.

Todd was set to come between noon and one.  I cleaned up myself and the room...kept trying to feed the baby.  And then, with the lights off and the shades mostly pulled and the fan whirring softly, I drifted off again with Ellie snuggled on me.  I didn't mean to.  I'm not really a napper.  But I was tired and so was she, finally able to sleep again with food in her stomach.  It's an odd moment, one stuck in my memory as I drifted off.  I was excited to go home and be with my family and Adam and Abbey, but it was a moment I wanted to hold onto.  I had my littlest girl.  She was healthy and happy, all my fears of the last nine months were for naught.  Eleanor was here.  Our family was complete.

Todd came as I was signing some paperwork, stressed from work and ready to take us home.  We loaded up and left, Ellie in her seat on my lap as they insist on wheeling you out.   We were headed home.  Ellie's cries were so much quieter than we were used to, we actually stopped for me to check to make sure her face wasn't covered.  But, nope, that's just how she sounds.