Well, Piper's 8 days old, today, and Lane and I are starting to get the hang of being parents. The daylight hours are easiest since she seemed to decide right away that the hours of 11 PM - 4 AM are way more fun to be up and alert, but we're learning how to handle that, too. Lane's sleeping in the evenings, from about 7PM to 5AM with breaks for feedings, and I'm sleeping in the mornings, from about 3AM to 11AM, depending on when Pi finally decides she's sleepy again.
Piper had her first visit to the doctor a couple of days ago. After babies are born, they can lose up to 10% of their body weight. For reference, that means the lowest anyone is comfortable seeing her go is 5 lbs 5 oz. So, when she left the hospital, she weighed 5 lbs 9 oz. When we weighed her at the doctor's office, she weighed 5 lbs 9.2 oz, which everyone was happy about-- it meant she had probably stopped losing and was going to start putting it back on. She also had good color, good heart sounds, and she didn't even cry.
Back when we were in the hospital with her, the nurses were keeping track of Piper's input and output by giving us a chart that we filled out with times on it for feedings and diaper changes. Lane and I both agreed that this was valuable information that would give us some empirical evidence to use if she started losing weight, and hopefully help us figure out if we were doing something wrong. The consistency with which we're keeping up with it, however, seems to be endlessly amusing to the nurses. They're all impressed with how complete the data is until we explain, "I'm a computer programmer and she's a CPA." Then, without fail, we get the, "Oooh" noise (and they look at us a little like we were sent from the future to protect John Connor).
Today, we went on our first family outing. Sure, we've taken a few walks around the neighborhood already, pushing the stroller and checking to see if Piper reacted to the sight of squirrels (she's made a few barking noises that have been mildly concerning), but this was our first experience dealing with the public. Lane decided she was in the mood for sushi (and who am I to argue with sushi, really?), so we all went to Kiku's and used the excuse to stop in to Paws, next door, and pick up some cat food. We've done our homework, of course, and followed the most common tips: don't let strangers put their dirty mitts on her, feed/diaper her before you go to keep her happy, dress her appropriately for the weather. And with all of that accomplished, it couldn't have gone better. She slept through the entire meal, we got to show her to Emma at Paws, and we got all the way back home before she even realized anything had happened. Score!
We're still taking things one day at a time, so there's no telling what tomorrow will bring, yet, but I'm sure we'll think of something!
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