Hour 42

Pictures at the bottom for those in a hurry!

The answer to life, the universe, and everything! We've been home now for 42 hours, and everything seems to be going okay. We are slowing learning the pattern of change, feed, rest, change, feed, rest, repeat. Still in the process of figuring out the overnight part, right now we are leaning towards splitting the night in half where each person gets to sleep for 4 hours.

Today we had our at home care visit, where a nurse comes to the house to check on things and answer any questions we might have. It was a nice visit, and we got some useful information. Megan has very slight jaundice, when we left the hospital she was a level 8. But today, it had dropped to a level 6.1. They really don't worry about it or do any treatment unless it's level 20 or so. Her discharge weight was 8 lbs 3 oz and her weight today was 8 lbs 2 oz, so she has not lost any weight and will probably be back up to birth weight within a week. They like to see a baby return to birth weight within 2 weeks usually.

Andrea and I are doing good, we've already had our first break down! Glad to get that over and done with. On the plus side, my Mom was over at our house during the incident, and her comforting and helping with the baby was exactly what we needed. THANKS GRANDMA!

In the near future, I will probably shift my posts to more of my perspective of this whole experience. It is my blog after all. :-) But I want to share details about Andrea for all my friends and family as well. Probably the only real big development for Andrea in the last 42 hours is that her milk came in yesterday! That was a very exciting thing for us, and Andrea as well. We've actually got through a few feedings that were exclusively breast milk. Prior to that, we've been adding in formula feedings to keep Megan well fed and happy as a clam. And she is a very happy baby... so far. (fingers crossed)

I'm personally doing okay - it's been harder then I thought it would be. I think it's tougher for Dads to figure out their role in these early phases. Add to that my all or nothing personality, and it can get even worse. It's probably why so many Dads go back to work right away. That way they don't have to think about it. It's also been very hard dealing with all these new emotions. Yes, I'm a guy, but believe it or not, I'm human too. I've always been the type of person to keep my emotions in check simply because it's easier. Now they are coming on so strong and fast, it's pretty impossible to do that. Andrea is a little worried about me, and probably rightly so. I haven't really been eating right (enough) and I've dropped almost 4 lbs since Megan was born. (that's 4 pounds in 3 days) Obviously this is not very healthy and I need to get back on a regular schedule. For some reason my appetite is just not there. Or I will go to make something and lose interest in eating it by the time it's ready.

I think the key for me is slowly integrating aspects of my "pre-Daddy" life into my "post-Daddy" life until I find a healthy medium. I should take breaks to blog, play an hour of video games here and there. And I've decided that next Monday I will follow up with my Lifetime fitness plans and hit the gym starting next week.

Last but not least, I thought I would include some close-up shots of Megan so people can pick apart who she looks like. (I'm no good at that game, I think Megan looks like Megan!) I apologize for the quality, but these were taken with no flash.