Bringing Home Baby

Isabella's first 24 hours were a whirlwind. Being in the hospital really means no rest for parents, followed by TONS of visitors! During Isabella's first 24 hours, she met a lot of my family members and many of our friends too, including my parents, Isabella's 2 maternal great-grandmothers (came from AR and Ontario, Canada!), my brother, Aunt Becka, and many friends and coworkers. I think we had 40 people come by! wow! we are loved!! In addition, we had 15 different hospital personel coming and going to check on us and help us in various ways as we were learning how to better take care of Isabella. Robert did his 1st ever diaper change and had it easy - he did pretty good, but was also very slow! He quickly picked up that duty, thankfully! Isabella was born ready to eat and seemed to know how to nurse with a little help from me. I have to say it would be very intimidating to try and nurse without having much knowledge base before hand! In this case my L&D nurse background came in very handy and didn't scare me!
Overall, it was an extremely busy day with Izzy only gone to the nursery for 10 minutes to get weighed and BP check! She did awesome with all the visitors and loved being held. She got an early introduction to how loud and involved my family is! When the 24 hr mark came around, we opted to go home so we could get some REST! when she was 25 hrs old, we went home...at 9pm! It was pretty hectic to come home late at night and try to get a brand new baby to bed while unpacking and trying and also I was supposed to be recovering from childbirth, right? HA! I just have to say thank goodness Robert and I work well and quickly together and dont even have to ask each other to do stuff, we just know what needs to be done and things went smoothly!
I'm also grateful for my parents who helped care for Izzy and us! Both Grammy and Grandpa (my parents) took turns soothing her while we got unpacked! It was a long night as Izzy liked eating every 2 hours...for 45 minutes. I pretty much lived on excitement for several days!! Robert & I slept in the next am and Mom & Dad took care of housework and played with baby (and napped with baby too)... They headed home on day 3 and we had an afternoon with just the 3 of us! some close friends brought over some homemade grilled pizza! -thanks Craig & Merschon! It was sooo delicious!! we enjoyed hanging out with them. We pretty much just chilled and took care of Isabella while waiting for Roberts parents to arrive. His parents were able to make the LONG trip from Florida to come visit their first grand baby. At Midnight on Day 3, Isabella met her other grandparents, Mim & PaPa! The Stewarts were able to stay a week and that was soo nice! My mother-in-law helped take care of every household chore as well as running errands and watching Izzy! we were even able to sneak out for a few quick outings with just Robert & me! I am so glad they were able to come and spend some time getting to know their first grandchild! We are very blessed to each have such loving parents who were apart of Izzy's arrival. Of course they loved every precious minute with her :) I cannot express to you guys how VERY special their visit was. I enjoyed watching all 4 of them with her and seeing the pure joy and excitement in their faces...babies are so special!
Overall, it was a wonderful, memorable first week with our daughter, filled with little sleep, lots of pictures, good food from our friends (people brought food over Every night for 2 weeks!! - so awesome!), great time with family and a lot of time watching and cuddling Isabella! Bringing home baby to us was pretty much Heaven on Earth!