Liliane - part 2

Our baby girl is three weeks old today! I can hardly believe it. It seems like such a long time ago... Anyway, to continue the story, once Liliane was born, we got set up in our private room (yay for good medical insurance!) in the maternity ward. Our daughter went off to have a bath and we settled in and started to doze. That was the only time she was actually away from us! There was a fold out single bed in the room for Stéphane so he bunked down at the foot of my hospital bed and Liliane had her basic plastic see-through bassinette/trolley thing that she really didn't enjoy. Anyway, long story short, being in the hospital is like being in Vegas. You never really sleep, there are no clocks in the room or anything so it's hard to get a sense of day and night. People are always coming and going and I found myself in a state of half-undress almost all the time because I was constantly breastfeeding. OK, maybe that last part isn't like any experience I've ever had in Vegas but I've heard stories...

Here are some typical images of our time in the hospital... Trying to sleep, and either feeding or just finishing feeding. Again, sorry about the boob exposure but I'm telling you, you don't even realize that you're half naked after a while!

We ended up staying in the hospital a little longer than expected due to my inability to pee. Suffice it to say that while I got through all my contractions without any drugs, I was collapsed on the bathroom floor in agony, crying for the nurse to fix my bladder problem when I couldn't empty it a few hours after delivering. Having a catheter is not pleasant, but it was such a relief for me that I actually welcomed it! I stayed tubed up like that for a couple of days but finally on Friday (after another meltdown when I still couldn't empty my bladder 24 hours later) I felt like I was getting back to normal. The policy is to not let you leave until you can show them you can pee a certain amount (seriously, it's measured and everything because you have to go into a little plastic hat thingy - totally unpleasant) but by this time I was determined to get home. I told them I had peed enough and wanted to get the heck outta there. Fortunately they desperately needed the room for someone else so we packed up our stuff and headed home.

Stéphane continued to be a superhero throughout our whole hospital experience. While I was dealing with my various issues, he spent lots of time with Liliane and learned very quickly how to not only change her diaper but also how to keep her calm and distracted since I couldn't feed her in the state I was in. He also went out for food and coffee and whatever else we needed (including a bouquet of flowers for me and a "I was born at St. Mary's Hospital" t-shirt for Lili) and kept on top of the nurses if they weren't coming to see us fast enough when we called. He even helped me figure out breastfeeding and how to tell when she wasn't latched on well. A real superstar :) This is a very tired new Papa on our first morning at home...

Stéphane's parents came to visit us in the hospital and we got some pretty adorable pictures:

They also came to pick us up which was wonderful because it was pouring BUCKETS of rain outside. Stéphane installed the carseat, we loaded up all of our stuff and we all headed home in the storm. What a relief to get home!

My Mom arrived from Vancouver the next day so I'll have lots more photos to post! Hopefully it won't take me another week but we never know...