Early Days

I feel that I am a little behind because of course I had a newborn baby and was not writing very often, but now my darling daughter is five months old and it's the middle of winter so I feel that I have more time to write. That being said I would prefer to write more about what Is going on in our lives now so I will sort of write a little bit of an overview of the last few years.

After coming home from the hospital I decided to set up with the baby in the living room so that my husband could get a good night sleep. He had to prepare to write his bar exams about two weeks after the baby was born, we also reasoned that it would be better for one of us to be well rested and 'sane' in the morning. We set up the sofa bed and bassinet, I had the TV, books and magazines. For the first couple weeks it seemed that I sleep very well when the baby slept but I was up every couple hours. In order to not get frustrated or too tired I usually put on a a movie or show when the baby ate. It was a good judge of how quickly she began to fed because although at first was able to watch an entire move in the middle of the night, soon enough I was only watching half and then even less.

I have a very clear memory of the moment each night when the dawn came and I sort of felt that had made it. Then little while later my husband would come out from his night and I would feel such a sense of success and relief as I passed baby duty to him and had a lovely deep two hours sleep.

Ten days after my little darling arrived one of my best friends arrived to help out while my husband studied. We had the absolute best time. The weather was beautiful, warm, sunny and we spent most days walking the seawall and finding nice shady trees to park ourselves under for the afternoon. We had picnics, talked, read and the baby just slept, ate and was absolutely adored by both of us. My recollection of
August was that it was an idyllic summer.

I must say a few words about my sweet friend who I will refer to as auntie nanny. She came and was the perfect friend and helper, she made those first few weeks so easy, by not only keeping me company but by being the domestic goddess that she is. She did laundry, tidied up, went shopping and cooked dinner (we had full-on sit down dinners with a two week old baby, amazing right?). An example of how amazing she was, was when we met up with one of my friends here in Vancouver who had a baby a few weeks before me and we all went
for a walk and auntie nanny was on it. I mean she was right there pulling out the carrier when my friends baby was sick of being in the stroller. When we stopped for a feeding break she had the privacy blanket in hand before my friend could even ask for it. I believe the consensus at the end of the day was that everyone should have an auntie nanny for the first couple weeks with a new born. There are no words for how ridiculously fantastic she was and is.

Hooray Hospitals!

I am very pro hospitals and giving birth in a hospital was yet another positive hospital experience. One of the nicest things about giving birth in a hospital (aside from the drugs which sadly I didn't get) was the level of care after the birth. First off, it was pretty great knowing that in those first hours after having my daughter I was surrounded by hospital staff that were there to support me. They provided food (okay it's not the best but it shows up three times a day), they have disposable underwear (sounds weird but comes in handy), the nurses are available to reassure you that all the strange things that you didn't know would happen to your body are normal (for all the reading that happens about pregnancy and childbirth, there is very little prep for what comes after). Most important however, was the knowledge that health care professionals were available to check up on and assist me and my husband with our new born baby. We had the most amazing nurses and I have a new level of respect and a little bit of awe thinking about what nurses do everyday. They helped with everything from learning to breastfed to the simple task of changing diapers. Overall there was a peace of mind knowing that we were in the safest possible place and getting the best care (I also enjoyed the face that everything is sterile but that's just me). So hooray for hospitals, doctors, nurses and modern medicine!