First Week Memories

Hmmm....does "Blog" stand for "Back Log"??? I've been pretty backed up with my blogging, but I figure I better start jotting these memories down before I really forget them. TIme seems to stand still, but fly by at the same time when you've got a precious little one. Anyways, here's how I recall my first week.

I remember the day that we were discharged from Kaiser hospital. It seemed like there was a ton of paperwork that needed to filled before we left (birth cert, etc), additional tests that Avery had to take (hearing), and there was always someone in the room. At one point, there was even a maintenance guy that came in to change the fan in the room! The number of people in our face was getting ridiculous, Tracy and I were grumpy from the lack of sleep, and we just wanted to go home. Finally, after paying the hospital bill and getting the carseat ready, we were ready to take our precious baby Avery home!

Do you ever get a song playing in your head over and over again? Sometimes that happens to me. This time it was Will Smith's "Just The Two Of Us" playing in my mind. "Took an hour just to get the car seat right" and "People driving all bad, got me kinda upset" resonated in my brain. I gently placed her in the car seat base, made sure that I heard two clicks, signifying that the seat was properly latched on the base. I usually take the Geary Street to get back to my apartment, but this time, I took the back streets back to the inner richmond. It seemed like an eternity to get her home. When we finally got back, we brought her up to her new home and placed her gently in her bassinet. We then proceeded to finally get some well deserved rest.

The next few days, we had a gang of very generous visitors come by, way to many to mention, that dropped off gifts and food. Honestly, it was a bit overwhelming at times, but I was also very touched that we were getting so much support from our very awesome friends and family. Of course, my parents came over with traditional Chinese dishes for Tracy, which consisted of a huge bucket of ginger pickled pigs feet and chicken soup. I can understand why the chicken soup would be necessary, but I never did understand the whole pickled pigs feet concept. If we were to be eating this much pork fat, why couldn't it be in the form of bacon or pork belly buns ala Chairman Bao? Anyways, we didn't want to disappoint Grandma, so we ate as much as we could. I can proudly say that we almost finished 8 quarts of chicken soup. As for the pigs feet, good thing Linda and Gil were there to help out :)

As for how little Avery was doing, she was very awesome that first week. She slept what seemed like 20 hours a day, and she only got up when she was hungry or wet. She had absolutely no problems taking to formula, as she consumed 2 ounces of Similac every 3 hours or so. As for diapers, she was pooping out the dark brown stuff, meconium, I believe it's called. The hardest adjustment was the lack of sleep. Like any typical baby, she would wake up every 2 to 3 hours and want to be fed. Although we were tired and the lack of sleep was rough, it was a wonderful tired and we loved dragging ourselves out of bed to prepare her food.

All in all, our first week with Avery was everything we could have hoped for and more. We had a beautiful new baby to cuddle, tons of love and support from everyone, and a diaper genie full of little Avery dumplings ;-)