Xiaoniu 小妞

The days this past week have flown by despite the recent changes in our lives. Even Sue noticed it. The little one has learned enough to understand what is going on in her life. We’ve learned enough about her to know what each of her sounds mean and how much and how often she likes to eat. Overall she’s pretty easy to deal with. That may just be experience talking, or she really is less demanding than Emelia.

The kids are doing very well together. Caitlin is still in the stage where she spends most of the day sleeping and is only awake for short moments of looking around and nursing. Emelia knows that Caitlin is her little sister, but seems to look at her as a living doll. I call her my little peanut, because she seems so little to me and curls up into a little bean shape. It’s adorable.

I never wrote anything about our experience at the hospital, but I’ll say that unlike the hospital we used for Emelia this one is much, much less busy. I would say that any time we were there that there was at most four other families there. The entire ward is smaller too. The benefit is that you get more attention from the nurses and quicker responses to requests. Not to mention the place is quieter with less people walking around. You get some privacy.

The hospital itself is older, but comfortable. Sue’s room was a single, like most rooms. That’s a nice change from Emelia’s place where the post-partum rooms are for the most part doubles. Also, unlike the other hospital this one gave you access to the phone and full cable TV for free. The other place charged a lot of money to turn them on.

The nurses were quite nice. We had quite a few visit over the few days we were there and I would say that all but two were excellent. They were always attentive and ready to help with anything. They even went so far as to send us a card to our home signed by the nurses congratulating us on our new baby.

The two I didn’t like didn’t spend much time with us. One wasn’t that bright and the other was older and arrogant. She kept coming in while we were exhausted telling us that we need to do this and do that to breast feed the baby correctly and that the kid wasn’t eating correctly. It isn’t like this is our first child. Sue has breast fed a baby for a full year. It’s not that difficult; the baby just needs to learn how to latch on and the rest just works.

We brought Caitlin to the doctor’s office on Tuesday for her first checkup. Everything went well. The nurse was somebody we never met before and she ended up like the arrogant old woman from the hospital. She asked Sue to breast feed the baby and then proceeded to tell Sue that she was doing this and that wrong and that the baby wouldn’t eat the way that she was doing things. That’s a shock since the baby was eating just fine.

The doctor on the other hand was very nice (as usual) and commented that our baby is just perfect. The mild jaundice that she had would go away. His only suggestion was that we increase the supplement feedings to improve her weight.

Last Thursday we brought her back for a checkup and she regained five ounces. The doctor was shocked and very pleased at he 2.5 ounce per day gain in weight. Today we brought her in for another follow up and she’s at 8 pounds now. That’s a full ounce more than her birth weight, which is excellent.

Besides the trips to the doctor office we’ve spent last week catching up with sleep, laundry and household chores. I’m not starting anything that would end up becoming a big project, but little things that have been let go of for too long are now being taken care of. Things are likely to get worse once I return to work, but we’re doing our best

This week I plan to finish up a few more tasks and try to get into the rhythm of having to get the kids ready in the morning so that I can be to work on time.