Baby freeeee

January 19th, 2005

What a strange experience.

Last night was spent in the hospital, ‘rooming in’. In the special care unit there’s a big room called the family room where we had to spend the night with junior to see how we got on. I think we got on just fine. He’s still a little reluctant to feed but with the proper encouragement he managed to get through them all.

His fabulous progress has meant that he’ll more than likely get out this afternoon, meaning that I’ll be off work for the next two weeks for more of the same sleep depravation fun.

The family room was a little like a hotel room, even down to the little shelf with a kettle and some tea-bags. It gave the whole thing a surreal ‘role-playing’ feel to it, as if things could still be called off at any moment and they’d put him back where he came from.

There’s only a single bed in the family room, and dads don’t get breakfast - only mums. Should really be called the ‘Mum and baby’ room with Dad presumably off earning money or doing some other distant dad-like thing.

A midwife assured us that it’s very different in Australia where they have double beds and are very encouraging about the whole family unit thing. So there you go.

Personally, I slept like a baby (apart from feeding times, obviously) but the missus didn’t get many winks at all and ended up rather zombie-like. My dream of a shift-system seems a little harder to operate than I’d previously imagined.

Anyways, little baby will be home at last this afternoon. The car-seat has been fitted in preparation, and his bottles are neatly arranged in the specially cleared cupboard in the kitchen. Wish us luck.

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