We had the house professionally cleaned before we came home, and we were so excited to introduce the baby to his new room... all decorated and fully furnished top to bottom from his mom's dedication and stubborn love (there was an instance when we were at target buying baby items and I asked, "don't we already have this?" to which her harsh response was "david, i know every. single. item. in the baby room so don't be asking me what we have and don't have." Sheesh!) The next two days were kind of a blur. The life change was just too drastic and sudden that I was unable to register what happened. Melissa was gracious enough to let me sleep while she stayed with the baby and who knows how many hours the baby kept her awake those first few days? I walked out in the morning to find her curled in a ball freezing, lying next to the baby in his bassinet. It was such a wonderful image that showed a mother's devotion and love for her child. It earned her some instant respect.
2 days after we get back from the hospital - while the struggle of taking care of a newborn was still very real - we had to bring the baby out to his first pediatrician visit. Turns out the baby had jaundice, which is pretty common, but from the pediatrician, we then drove to a lab in mountain view, then went home, then got called to go to el camino hospital where we had to leave the baby there overnight while he got his tan on. I was so excited at the prospect of getting a break (even though daddy duties didn't constitute for very much yet) and just spending some time with Melissa. We picked up some take out, and went home and watched movies together. It was the perfect evening for me. But a few times throughout the night, i'd look over at Melissa and catch her looking at pictures of baby Isaiah. I could tell that she was distracted and when I asked her about it, she asked if we would be able to go back first thing in the morning to go check on him.
Anyway, turns out the baby was okay. We spent a couple of hours there and when we got back that night, we checked Melissa's blood pressure. Her preeclampsia symptoms were supposed to go away when she delivered the baby but her blood pressure was still abnormally high even post partum. We had been averaging around 150/105 (normal is 120/70) but that night, it came back at 175/122. We immediately called the doctor who told us that these numbers were life threatening and we had to get to an ER right away. So we call up some loved ones nearby to come watch the baby for a bit while we go get this checked out. At the ER, they immediately admitted her and said that they'd have to closely monitor her at least until tomorrow. I didn't want to leave Melissa in the hospital by herself, but at the same time, I didn't want to leave a volatile newborn with others and I knew damn well that there's no way I'd survive a night with just me and the baby so there was only one thing to do... I drove out of the hospital at 1:30 in the morning to go pick up Isaiah and bring him back into mommy's arms again.
There we stayed for the next 2 evenings. They plugged her up on some magnesium IV that made her feel like crap but it never slowed down her resolve to care for Isaiah. No matter how sick she felt, she'd still feed him, hold him, swaddle him to sleep. With no practice, not even the experience of holding a baby, Melissa somehow perfectly fit into the mold of a loving mother. I, on the other hand, still had much to learn. But I'm just glad to finally be back home.
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So that was our first week with baby Zay. It definitely wasn't easy, but it was an adventure. I feel that it strengthened the bond between Meliss and I as partners, and it made us thankful of the small things. We had a lot of people caring for us and praying for Melissa's health. Sometime the last few days (I'm writing this on 11/10), Melissa's blood pressure just started tapering off naturally back to normal. She's stopped taking medication tentatively and our recent monitoring shows that her BP has not gone back up. Praise the Lord!
|10/23/14| Baby's first night back in the house
|10/24/14| Overnight Jaundice treatment
|10/25/14| Back to the hospital we go to support mommy
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