Following Georgiana’s birth in the early morning hours on Wednesday, mother and baby were discharged from the hospital on Saturday afternoon. After having driven with the car seat installed and ready to go for a couple of weeks now, it was satisfying to finally be able to put it to its intended use.
The Sprout is a joy to behold, and surprisingly unfussy. She slept most of the day away, waking only to be fed and changed. It was with an equal sense of dread and anticipation that bedtime came, and we faced our first night with a newborn in the house.
The first few hours were predictably chaotic. She started crying and would not stop, except for a few brief moments that only served to provide us with a false sense of relief. My wife held her and walked around the room for a bit, then I did the same to no avail. The Sprout’s grandmother took over from there, and at that point, with the baby’s crying muffled by virtue of being at the other end of the house, I fell asleep. Having heard all of the “lack of sleep” stories from parents who are older and wiser than we are, none of this was a surprise to us.
Because the Sprout is small, and because the C-section required that my wife take pain meds on a regular schedule, I had set the alarm to go off in the middle of the night. When that time came, I reached across the bed to find emptiness where my wife should have been, and in my sleepy stupor it barely registered with me that I didn’t hear the baby crying. I fell back asleep.
Four hours later, I woke up again to find that nothing had changed. My wife had not come back to bed, and the baby was not in the Pack-n-Play that we had set up in the bedroom. Out of a growing sense of concern, I looked in the nursery, which was empty. I went downstairs.
My wife was lying on the couch, with the Sprout safely snuggled on her chest, asleep. She told me that, after the baby would not settle, she came downstairs with her so as not to disturb the rest of the house, placed the baby on her chest, and soon after discovered that the kid had fallen fast asleep, with the soothing sound of her mother’s heartbeat in her ear.
As I write this, we’ve just crossed the third night with the baby, and everything is going smoothly. My wife sets the Sprout on her chest until she falls asleep, then eases her into a small travel bassinet by her side of the bed. At some point during the night, either the baby will stir awake, or my wife will wake her for feeding and a diaper change. Other than that, everyone has experienced smooth sailing straight on until morning.
We remain cautiously optimistic.
