Through the night.
Eventually.
We now understand what everyone was saying when they said that we would be exhausted. We were both too exhausted to even think straight. Abigail could tell that we were a little tense and that made her tense as well. That meant a lot of crying. Turns out she had some mucus left in her tummy. Once they got rid of that, she calmed right down.
Our hospital (and I think most these days) lets the baby stay in the room with the mom, and has the option to send the baby to the nursery if you need some rest. They will bring her back for feeding if you breast feed, or just feed her if you bottle feed. Several of our friends recommended that we take advantage of this for at least the first night just to get some VERY much needed rest.
Around eleven or midnight, we finally gave in and had them take her. She slept very well for them, waking up once, but they rocked her back to sleep. We were able to sleep for about 4 hours--the max they will let a newborn sleep without feeding, even if she hasn't woken up. They brought her in, she got fed, and then we had them take her back until she was hungry again at 6.
We were so refreshed, even if we only got 6 hours of broken sleep. We didn't even realize how tired we were until we were awake this morning. We were doubters at first (yeah, we're first time parents, give us a break), but I highly recommend taking advantage of this if you are in a similar position. With all of the security measures in place at this hospital, there really isn't any worry about baby swap or missing babies--Abbie has a security tag on her like the ones you find on CDs at Circuit City and two id bracelets that match up with ours.
Posted by molson at May 13, 2008 9:54 AM