Saturday 11:52 am

In the midst of a small window where I'm awake enough to compose coherent sentences of bananas and fish, I figured I should post something . . .

Xander spent most of the last few days here with us, with regular visits to the nicu for things like help with breastfeeding, help with breastfeeding, and help with breastfeeding (seeing a pattern yet?). He's been well behaved and quiet, but he's been having issues latching to the nipple properly, and Sandra's had some issues helping him to latch. That said he's been having regular feeds from the breast, and happily eating from the bottle.

Later, at 9:20pm

We were moved to the postnatal ward this afternoon, where Sandra's been getting more assistance with feeding Xander, and more assistance with him in general - the postnatal ward is set up to deal with new parents, in a way the antenatal war isn't. Sandra's having more success feeding him now, and he's been discharged so we're completely responsible for him. It's rather nice, and we're coping pretty well, now that Sandra's more confident with the feeding. We're also getting better at other aspects of this parenthood thing, like settling him and dressing him. I just changed his clothes and wrapped him, and when he didn't want to settle I used my finger as a dummy - after a few minutes he was sleeping happily and I could (carefully) pull my finger out.

Before that moment I couldn't imagine putting my finger in a baby's mouth, let alone use it as a dummy - I've always found sticky things icky, so the idea wouldn't have occurred to me. But it was totally natural and not icky at all.

So yeah, things are settling down and I think they're looking good for the future.

A couple of things that I'm currently thinking of: spending a while in hospital is a quick sharp lesson in basic hygiene - I've washed my hands more often and more thoroughly than ever before on my life, and I've been constantly bombarded by hygiene related messages and dictums. To go onto the nicu you have to take off all jewelery and was your hands and forearms; one time I was asked to wear a facemask because of my cold. Unfortunately, the constant hand washing has resulted in extremely dry skin on my hands - so dry it's cracking and bleeding. I'm goingg to have to use some of Sandra's udder cream to make them less painful.

On the other hand being here has been really valuable. Being able to find a midwife and get a fairly authoritative answer to any questions, and help dealing with any problems, is really great.