Cooper Comes Home

Well, we’ve made it to Tuesday!

They discharged us from the hospital and we made our way home Sunday afternoon. It was a good ride home and went well. Janelle’s mom and sister stayed with us for a few hours to make sure we were all settled in. My parents came in Sunday night to stay with us. (My dad had to go back to Ashland Monday morning, but my mom is staying with us for a few days.)

The first evening and night went okay. Things were a little rocky in the middle of the night, when an exhausted Janelle and David didn’t know what to do with a fussy Cooper who just didn’t want to do anything but scream and cry. But we made it through.

As with most new parents, getting sleep is a little rough. He has a case of jaundice, so they wanted us to feed every two hours. (That’s two hours from start of feeding to start of feeding.) Feeding that often means little sleep for Janelle, and it started catching up with her. Luckily, we made it through the night and passed Cooper off to my mom after his 7:00 a.m. feeding. Thank God she was there. We finally got an hour and a half of good, solid sleep. I think we were both out cold in 5 seconds!

Last night was better. He still got fussy at one point, but it wasn’t nearly as bad. We quickly learned to take turns staying up with him. (We knew that, but it’s just hard your first night – no one wants to go to sleep and not be there for him.) We again handed him off to my mom after his morning feeding and grabbed a couple hours of sleep.

We made our first trip out of the house with him yesterday, too. Because of the jaundice, the pediatrician wanted to see him on Monday. It was an easy trip there, and other than him peeing all over the place (diaper off) when they weighed him, all was well. The doctor told us he was all normal, things were looking good, etc. We took him to the lab to have some blood drawn to test his belliruben (jaundice). That took longer than we would like, and when they were taking blood he SCREAMED like crazy. But we got through that, too. They called later on with the results, and his jaundice was going down like they wanted and said we didn’t need to come back until his 2 week old visit. (Day one his jaundice count was at 9.5, then up to 15 and then 14. It had gone back down to 10, which most likely means it has peaked and should be clearing up. As long as it’s under 17 at his age, they just keep an eye on it.)

I think we’ve gone through every piece of clothing that fits him, and each of his receiving blankets. We’re just keeping up the wash and that’s fine. He was back to his birth weight at the doctor, which means he’s eating well. (They told us we can go to 2.5 – 3 hours between the starts of feeding, which translates to another half hour of much needed sleep.) He’s probably hitting 8 pounds today, so that puts him at the beginning of the 0-3 month outfits. That’s good, because we have a lot more of those than new born outfits.

Well, I’ve rambled on long enough. I do want to say thank you for all the emails, texts, messages, etc. that you have sent to us. I’m sorry that I haven’t returned most of them, as you can imagine it’s been a little crazy. But we are extremely grateful of your support, thoughts and prayers.

All is well, and we’re fortunate to have such a beautiful and well-behaved (all things considered) young son. We’re cherishing every minute with him, and can’t wait for the next glance, the next little smirk…even the next dirty diaper and spit up. Check back often as I’ll try to keep this updated and add a few pics when we can.

Love,
David

ps – We did notice that they had finally put his picture up on the hospital’s website: http://babycentral.centralbap.com/default.asp?group=49676