Welcome Home Baby

After an arduous and extended hospital stay, baby and I are finally back home and settled and adjusting to our new lives together. Baby is feeding and sleeping very well and his parents are slowly getting the hang of the newborn routine. We have survived Week One and are full steam ahead into Week Two!

First Check Up
Baby had a check up scheduled for 2 days after his hospital discharge, so this was my very first outing on my own with baby. I booked a driver through the school and to make it easier, just had him drive our vehicle with the car seat already installed. I sat in the backseat with baby and the driver dropped me off at the entrance to the hospital. From there I put him in his stroller and navigated our way through the hospital to the pediatric clinic for our checkup and some blood work. Happily, his levels were all normal and no more treatments are necessary.

Meals for the New Parents
Our good friend set up a meal train for us beginning on our first night back from the hospital, and let me tell you how amazing this has been! Each night we have a freshly prepared hot meal dropped off at our doorstep, usually with a dessert to match and all Justin and I have to do is sit down and eat. No one needs to think about cooking or cleaning up and it has really been a lifesaver for these past two weeks. It’s also fun for me to pull up the signup sheet each afternoon to see what new delicious meal I have to look forward to. We are quite fortunate to be surrounded by such a supportive community who are good cooks to boot!

Mom Network
In addition to having a loving, supportive community, there is an incredible network of supermoms around here that have already given me so much love, support and encouragement that I get emotional just thinking about it. Moms have come over to bring me cookies, give me a hug, lend me a bottle warmer, assist me with breastfeeding, and just lend a sympathetic ear during those first few days when I was feeling anxious and weak and vulnerable. I’m so grateful to these moms for all the love they’ve shown me and for welcoming me into this sisterhood of moms. Now I finally get to have my own mom (and dad!) here tonight, yay!

Milestones
By the end of Week One both mom and dad have been peed on mid-diaper change, so considered us both officially christened into parenthood!

I’m also becoming quite adept at doing everything one-handed and picking things up with my feet!
For some reason I thought I should write down everything baby did for the first few days of life, so scrawled on my refrigerator in dry erase marker, or scribbled down in a notebook, or noted in my phone’s notepad are daily observations of feeding amounts and times, naps and waking times, and detailed observations on diaper contents. It’s a bit like a wildlife field observation, but with no real hypothesis established and no clear goal in mind. I don’t know what I’m doing with these notes, it just seemed like something I should be taking note of?

Harry Potter
On all those sleepless nights during my pregnancy where I couldn’t get comfortable or I couldn’t make my mind rest, I would get up and read Harry Potter in my rocking chair into the wee hours of the morning. Now with baby here, I’m still up at wee hours of the morning and Harry is still next to my rocking chair, though I’m getting through far less pages at a time now. I’m about halfway through Book 6 with one more book to go to finish the series. This will be a nice memory to share with my son and maybe we can even enjoy rereading the series together again someday.

The Grandparents
My parents are arriving in Riyadh tonight to spend the next three weeks with us and I couldn’t be happier. We’ve got the guest room all made up for them and Justin is taking a drive to the airport tonight to collect them and their many suitcases full of goodies for us and baby! Since baby is still so fresh, we won’t be able to do many big outings, but I’m hoping for a couple of nice meals out, maybe a shopping trip to the souqs, and of course strolls around the neighborhood and frequent visits to the frozen yogurt shop will all be feasible.

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of emotion, physical and mental recovery and adjustment, and just utterly new, exhausting and wonderful. After getting through my first week home with baby I’m feeling much more secure and confident and I’m just amazed every time I look over at this little guy and realize that he is all ours.