Almost immediately after being born I got her started on nursing and she was a natural. She ate for an average of 20-30 minutes and right around every 3 hours or so - which made the nurses happy. However, she didn't pee. The nurses say the rule is 1 wet diaper for every day of life so as long as she peed in the first 24 hours or so that was good enough. And so we waited for that to show up. Now as far as poopy diapers she had plenty stored up on that. In fact the second she escaped the womb she let it loose all over our doctor, the nurse... everywhere! Quite the mess... and she continued to have a handful of those diapers through the night.
She did relatively well sleeping on her momma that first night in the hospital bed. Her vitals throughout the night were good - she was running a tad hot, but still within a temperature that the doctors were comfortable with (99.2-99.6) that was her in a feetie pj outfit and laying on mom. If we took her out of it and put her just in a diaper with a receiving blanket she would be a tad too chilly - so we opted for a tad too warm - she was pretty content and cozy that way. My blood pressure was still oddly (to the nurses) low... but pretty average for me. 90/60... usually after pregnancy they see 130/90 and aren't concerned at all - so to see the 90/60 was baffling to them.
We woke for the day around 8am when my breakfast came - Mae continued to snooze. We spoke to the nurse about wishing to be discharged a tad earlier than the 24hour mark of 3pm in the hopes to avoid the forecasted 4pm snow storm that was looming. They said they'd do their best and so we started to gather all the necessary parties to come and take care of what we needed to do. Loving Husband filled out the birth certificate paperwork and whatnot necessary for the social security card.
Next up was the hearing test. The test was slightly different from 2.5 years ago with Ace, but basically the same as far as invasiveness. Mae was out cold during it - which they prefer - and so the test went super fast. The test on average takes 8 minutes - Mae was complete in 2.5 minutes. And she passed with flying colors. No worries for her ears. :)
After that we had the pediatrician come by and do her check up on Mae. She listened to her heart for a long time and eventually said that she detected a murmur and wanted to have an ultrasound/echo run on her heart to rule anything more serious out and that she'd prefer us to wait until we had those results before discharging us. The ultrasound tech came in and began what was a 40 minute ultrasound on our baby girl's heart. Lots of clicking, measuring, pictures were taken and all the while our little girl did GREAT to lay there and allow the tech to do her job. She only fussed when the cold gel was put on her... and there was a LOT of it all over her.
The test was sent over to Children's hospital to be read, and we continued to just relax and wait. The likelihood of us being able to leave by noon was long gone - but ah well - the weather forecast seemed to be hooey just the same so the threat of snow was pretty minimal. ;)
My doctor stopped in to visit and check up on us - and then we enjoyed some lunch. After that we continued to wait. Around 2:30pm the nurses came in and did the PICU test, checked her jaundice levels (all happy), and did 24hr weigh in. She was 6lbs 4oz - only having lost 4oz from birth and she had a good wet diaper... well it would have been if she had a diaper on - but it counted so she was one step closer to discharge having accomplished that task. Finally around 3pm, Loving Husband went and picked up Ace from the grandparents - in the hopes to avoid at least an additional commute there and then a further one home even later. He was gone about an hour, at the end of which the pediatrician came back in and gave us the results of the ultrasound. She has a small PDA and a PFO hole - these are pretty common - and can occur because flow is transitioning from the placenta to the lungs. The doctor said she wouldn't be surprised if she couldn't even hear it the next day and that they would close on their own. So on the dawn of her second day of life, with that happy news provided to us - we were discharged from the hospital as a family of four and we headed home with not a snowflake in sight!
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