Leaving the hospital

I've been wanting to write more about our sweet little Naomi, but for some reason I haven't had the time! Now, I know what you're all thinking: of course not-- you have a new baby! Plus you have a toddler. There will never be enough time! But when Penny was born I did nothing but sit on the couch with her, giving me plenty of time to write one-handed posts on my blog.

Let me introduce the first difference between my girls: appetite! If you can imagine (or as you can see from the pictures on the side of my blog), Penny ate A LOT! When she would settle down to nurse, her average nursing time was probably 45 minutes. I thought that was normal, because for Penny, it was. But Naomi eats for about 10 minutes, then takes a break, and eats for another 10 minutes on the other side. It boggles my mind that a baby stops eating of her own accord. Totally foreign concept! But I'm liking it. It means that when she goes for 2 hours between feedings, it gives me about an hour and a half to myself. With Penny, that time was greatly reduced.

Here are some random pictures from the last few days. I'm so happy my mom's here! In addition to taking care of Penny and helping me with the baby, she also takes pictures! I always like having the pictures afterwards, but I never remember to take any. Thanks, Mommy!

Here is a family picture on day 1 when Penny first met Naomi:

Do any of you remember our exchange student, Kobe? He stayed with our family in 2001-02. Well, he lives in Beijing, and he came to see us. He hasn't changed at all, and here he is holding Naomi. It is his first time ever holding a baby-- I think every muscle in his body is tense. :)

Penny got to play in my hospital room, and I was SO HAPPY (ahem) she found these nursing covers that I'd gone out of my way and spent actual money on before we came to China. They make fun pig noses.

Penny loves her mei mei, and she is often very gentle with her (except this morning when she was whapping her head with a shoe). In this next picture, you can kind of see Naomi's newborn rash. On day 2, she developed a rash on her face and eventually on her whole body. It looked like a million mosquito bites, and her whole skin turned really red. It faded to look like acne, and now it's essentially gone. The doctors said it was normal and would go away within a week without any treatments. They were right! But I did notice we didn't take many pictures of day 2.

And finally, here is the hospital discharge picture. Don't worry, I took a cab home. I'm feeling marvelous, but not marvelous enough to shuffle home for 3 blocks. I stayed in the hospital for 2 nights and then left at noon on day 3. That's longer than I stayed with Penny, but it was much shorter than the hospital anticipated. I didn't need to be there, but since most people stay a long time, they kind of space out the tests and treatments they're going to do on the baby and me. So I had to pester a few people into completing them so I could go home. And now I'm home!

Oh, and they didn't make me take a wheel chair to the front door. They have them, and if I'd needed one they would have given it to me. But I have a feeling that if I needed a wheel chair, they wouldn't have let me leave in the first place.

And look how skinny I am! I still look quite pregnant (thank you, Kobe, for asking if there was still another one in there. See, I told you he hadn't changed!), but I feel like I'm fabulously thin. My clothes fit again (well, the maternity ones), and I can sit up or turn over in bed without needing a construction crane. It's lovely!