Tiny Person

Tiny Person

Spending time with my baby is a precious moment. Her tiny fingers and toes, her skinny little body and face. Her birth weight was half an ounce over five pounds, so she really was tiny. I had packed everything right for her arrival, sleep suits, vests, hats, nappies and none of them fit! Typical, I spent ages choosing what to pack and it was all huge on her tiny little frame. 

The blanket dwarfed her, but the sleep suit dwarfed her even more so. She lived inside the body of it and the arms and legs were unused as she just fell out of them. 

I missed her first poop, known as Meconium. While I was in surgery Jamie was giving her the first bottle, he then apparently asked my Mum why he had black gunk all down his arm. You guessed it, our darling child was already doing me proud! She had pooped on her Daddy, I'm just very disappointed that I had not witnessed his expression once he realised. 

It was strange not being able to get up when she stirred or put her back once settled. The feeling in my legs didn't return until breakfast time so Daddy was hands on straight away. Once I could start getting up I was so nervous, I wasn't feeling very confident, one minute I am dreaming of having my child, the next I had her and it dawned on me I had never even changed a nappy before! What had I done!!! Was I ready for this? This tiny person is relying on me to be the best mum I can and I hadn't fed her or changed her! Little did I know it was easy to do these things and my hormones had started the doubt running through my brain. Bad hormones!!!

These days you have to take in a starter pack of little milks if you are not planning on breast feeding, they are a pack of 6 bottles of ready to use milk with a tiny teat so they can drink straight from the bottle. The frustrating thing is she was only drinking around 10ml per feed and these bottles held 70ml. So if she didn't want any more then after one hour of opening the rest went in the bin. Why can't they make a smaller option to save such waste.  

I was to find out in the weeks to come that waste was a big part of feeding time although not to that extreme.

I was on overdrive, I couldn't sleep and I hadn't slept since the morning before she was born. Then it dawned on me that sleep was more important than ever as I wasn't going to be getting much with the night time feeds. 

Visitors weren't aloud in until 5pm so it was just us resting and getting to know our daughter. 

We both stared at her sleeping in her cot and asked each other how we created such a cute baby?!? What was even better was neither of us complimented the other with a "She got her cuteness from you my darling partner", we both just agreed in amazement. Now I think about it I am quite offended, I'm so much cuter than Jamie!

Visitors came and went and we had to wait on the pediatricians to come around and discharge us due to her birth weight and temperature which had thankfully finally started to rise. 

The time came that we could ring for our lift home. 

WAIT!

This means we are on our own... 23 hours after birth and we are going to be released into the world with a new person! No guide? No instructions? I remember going into Pets at Home once to buy a fish - they wanted to know the size of the tank, the amount of fish in the tank, if I had ever abused an animal, they may as well have asked me for my family history too! Why didn't they ask me any of these things for an actual human being! "How big is your room? How many nappies do you currently own? (490!)  How will you hold her? (Upside down by her feet of course) "

I suppose I kept the fish healthy and fed... it would be just as easy right?

WRONG!