Mia's first week of life was all about learning for our entire family. Mia was not much of an eater, although she did like to sleep A LOT. She slept so well, in fact, that it was difficult to get her to wake up and eat. The video below shows just how hard it was. We'd spend about an hour getting her to wake up to eat, only to have her fall back to sleep five minutes later even though she was naked and had a wet washcloth on her head.
Luckily, Dan and I had a great support system who helped us out A LOT and kept us sane. Dan was absolutely amazing, taking care of both me and Mia even though he was getting only slightly more sleep than I. I focused totally on Mia care (trying to get her to eat and do all of the things necessary to keep up my milk supply while she wasn't eating--this required getting almost no sleep at all). He did a lot of running around, cooking, and cleaning up while I sat in the apartment being pretty much of a mess.
Our friends Tim and Anh came by with dinner on our second night home from the hospital. The meal was excellent. Equally wonderful was seeing our friends and knowing that they were willing to help. Unfortunately, despite seeing them twice since Mia was born, I forgot to get some pictures of them with Mia. They are wonderful with her and are going to make excellent parents.
My mom arrived just after Anh and Tim left. I love my mom a lot, and can honestly say that I've never been so happy to see her. She was very helpful around the house, showered our entire family with love, and did a great job of encouraging us as we tried to figure out this whole parenting business. It was wonderful watching her enjoy Mia.
We were very fortunate for the support of our friends and my mom. However, the effort that my sister, Holly, and her husband, Darren, exerted to help us out is truly stratospheric. First of all, although they live just an hour and a half away, they took their camper to a fairly
expensive campsite about a half-hour from our house and stayed there for three nights just to be close and be able to hang out with us. My five year old nephew, Jamie, got sick right before they arrived in San Diego so he did not come in our house their first day here and they were all gracious about hanging out at our pool and keeping Jamie away from the baby (a pretty hard thing to be gracious about, especially if you are five). In addition, grand plans like taking our entire family to the zoo quickly fell by the wayside as it turns out that women recovering from childbirth can't walk long distances. They went alone, and were nice about it.This would have been more than enough wonderfully supportive behavior. However, they did a
lot more. First off, we became convinced that Mia would eat if only we had a glider rocker like the one I fed her in in the hospital. Dan had tried to find one, but let's just say that sleep deprivation got the better of him. Holly and Darren offered to give us one (after they had already given us MANY baby gifts, some handknit). It took something like calls to five separate Targets and an hour and a half at an actual store to actually purchase the darn thing, but it arrived at our house two days after we arrived home. On top of that, they brought food for our entire family to eat during their visit AND left us with over a week's worth of frozen meals to have once everyone had gone. Mia is not the only one who rocks!Other happenings in Mia's first week included her first bath and her first trip to a restaurant (for pizza). She was a real champ, waking only to eat and being perfectly content to stay in her carseat for the rest of the dinner. We pretty much spent the rest of the week feeding her, gazing at her, and telling her how wonderful she is.
