our first night home

While we were in the process of being discharged from the hospital, I remember Eric and I agreeing that all we wanted to do was go home and cuddle in bed as a new family of three! We didn't get out of the hospital until mid afternoon so I called my mom and asked her to come the next morning. As we drove home I sat in the back because Mia was screaming bloody murder the whole drive home. Eric and I were super anxious, as you can imagine, especially being brand new parents. We had no idea how to console her. And I'll admit, I was dying a little inside because all the picture I'd seen of families leaving the hospital with their brand new baby, well, the baby was fast asleep in the car seat. Not Mia! We were afraid we'd never be able to take her anywhere! (No worries, Mia screamed the second time she was in her car seat but fell asleep as soon as we started driving. She's been a champ in that thing ever since!)

Once we got home I fed Mia and she calmed right down. We took turns cuddling her and made our game plan for the night! We wanted to be sure Mia go enough to eat so that she'd give us a few hours to sleep so we decided that I would feed her, and then we'd give her a bottle of infant formula. When the time came, she nursed like a champ (I think) and then we offered her the formula and she sucked it down! She ate almost the full 2 ounces! Eric took the bottle away because we realized that may have been too much for her tiny tummy but Mia was fast asleep as soon as the bottle left her lips. We tucked her in bed and climbed in bed ourselves. We literally high-fived each other thinking this was the solution to getting multiple hours of sleep :) We cuddled up real close, fed each others egos by praising our parenting abilities, proclaimed our love to each other (we were on a high thinking Mia would be out for hours) and closed our eyes to sleep.

BAM! Mia woke up screaming.

And she screamed the whole night (I think). We took turns with her. Walking around holding her, sitting down and cuddling her, giving her the bink, laying her in the bouncer, feeding her... I mean, we tried everything! I remember at one point asking myself why the heck I asked my mom to wait the next morning to come stay with us?? After hours of trying to get Mia to stay asleep, and needing serious sleep ourselves, we climbed in bed and Eric had Mia sleep on his chest. You see, before Mia I was SO against having kids sleep in our bed. We just weren't going to do it! As you can imagine, I felt like a major failure because we didn't even make it one night before bringing our baby to bed with us, ha ha (which is totally crazy because no that I can think straight? I say do whatever it takes to get sleep)! Those hormones, man! I think I got the most sleep that night since going into the hospital to be induced almost 4 nights earlier, which isn't saying much at all :)

Bear with me as I go back in time and try to recount all of my first memories with Mia. I didn't think to blog about it at the time, and I don't have documentation otherwise!
Mia's birth story
Nursing
Hospital story #1
Hospital story #2