Done At the Hospital

Odds and ends from the last two days in the hospital:

I finally got to eat "real" food the next day after Sam was born. I was so sick of 7-Up and Jello!

Connor loved playing with the bed controls. He's so curious, he has to know how things work. Emma was just a monkey, and it was hilarious to watch them be glued to the tv in the room. Mom, who's Mom?

Emma was very cranky and upset whenever she visited at the hospital. If she could talk very well, I'd bet she'd say, "I miss you! When are you coming home. I'm so mad that you are not there!" P.S. - That's marker on her face.

Blizzard conditions the day Sam was born. And that led to...

My Mom has this tradition of picking out teddy bears to represent each one of her grandchildren. While browsing the selection at the hospital gift shop, she found this bear with nice frosty blue and white fur, just perfectly representing the frosty day Sam was born. Emma is really into stuffed animals these days, and she loved to hold the Sam Frosty bear.

Emma was enchanted with her new baby brother Sam...

...or maybe just his bink. She's been a notorious binky thief ever since we brought Sam home.

Zen and I got to have the traditional couple's dinner served up by the staff of the hospital cafeteria. Dani and Mom stayed home with Connor and Emma, so it was like a real date.

The day we left the hospital, Thursday. You'd never know it was blizzarding two days before. That's spring snow in Wyoming. On the left is the o.b. wing, where Sam was born and I recovered, and on the right is the main entrance.

All packed up and ready to go. The whole hospital had undergone a renovation recently, and the o.b. wing was new and spiffy. It was a lovely room to stay in. Some people hate staying in the hospital, but I love it, because I get a break from having to take care of things, and people are there to help me and get me what I need.

We had the hardest time picking out a middle name for Sam. We were just having no vibes whatsoever, be it family names or any other source. The last bit of paperwork to finish filling out before we left the hospital was the info for the birth certificate. Zen wrote some names on the dry erase board in my room, just names he, Dani, and I liked.

It took forever, but we finally narrowed it down to Samuel Zachary Allred.

Dani dressed Sam in his going-home outfit. Isn't she so beautiful? You get a glimpse of what she will look like when she's a woman. I catch myself looking at her, or she catches me looking at her, at random moments, and this is what I'm doing - imagining her as a woman, and the happy feelings it gives me. Dani often says, "You're doing it again!"

These are the three receiving blankets I sewed for Sam, with burp rags. Before and during the sewing, Emma took such a liking to the froggy fabric, that I wound up finding some more froggy fabric, but with a pink background, at Wal-Mart and made a pink froggy blanket just for her. It's because her favorite movie right now is the Princess Frog.

Dani helped to sew them. We worked on them while we listened to General Conference the weekend before Sam was born.

Baby Sam all packed up and ready to go. It was stressful getting out of there, because I invited the older kids to come and be with us when we took Sammy out of the hospital and took him home, but there were all these little details to take care of, like picking the middle name, and admittedly, I made it worse by trying to take just one more picture, and shooting a little video of the hospital room before I left. Zen and Gil were waiting out in the car with Emma, who was freaked out, and crying in her car seat.

It was good to be home and for everyone to have Mommy back, and there wasn't a medical reason to stay, but I have to say, a part of me wished I could stay alone at the hospital one more day, or maybe a week?