Ella's first few days

After moving to the mother baby unit, Ella was able to meet some more of her family who had been anxiously awaiting for her arrival as well as her big name reveal! Of course, mom was already there with the girls, soon Karen, Megan, Zoe, and Eric were there. Everyone was in such awe over how much she looked like Alyse
when Alyse was a baby.


Her first night went well. The grunting noises that she had been making since her birth stopped overnight. Her blood sugar levels also regulated to where they needed to be. She was up quite a bit nursing, but of course that was expected. The next day, the pediatrician came in and said that she looked and seemed perfectly healthy and shortly after that, my doctor came in and pretty much told me she'd write the orders for me to go home whenever I was ready. We weren't going to leave without little Ella though, so we stayed one more night.



I don't know what in the world is up at Winnie Palmer, but they've made a couple of changes since the last time I had delivered. The biggest annoyances were having to record every single diaper change, every single nursing session, as well as recording how much I was going to the bathroom. Talk about aggravating! I had just had a baby, was trying to recover, and they're wanting me to remember to do all those things?? Sheesh! I could understand if Ella had some issues and that needed to be monitored, but I'm going to call the third time mom card here and say that I kinda know what I'm doing. And as for how much I'm peeing? I get that they need to know that, but why do I have to chart it?

Little Ella sleeping away on my chest on her second night.

Anyhow, the next day, Ella and I were both released. Luckily, my nurse was pretty much on top of things and got our discharge info rolling along pretty quickly. We realized that the Health Department wasn't going to make it to our room in time to deliver Ella's birth certificate, so we called over to their office (which we could see directly out my room window) and told them that we would just come and pick it up ourselves.

So not the best picture, but getting ready to go home :)

Next thing we knew, transport was at the door and Ella and I were being pushed through the hospital to go home. I'm not going to lie, leaving was in a way sad. I was sad that that was more than likely the last time I'd get to go through the whole pregnancy/birth/brand-spanking-new-baby experience. Maybe it was just all my hormones, but I was most definitely sad. I was also worrying about whether or not Ella would have to be re-hospitalized, as both of her sisters did. The nurse checked her jaundice levels just before we were discharged, since it was a concern I had, she was at 9.something (8 maybe??) which was higher from the 7.something he had been during the early morning check. Anyways, at that point I was cautiously optimistic that we would avoid Arnold Palmer this go around.