Bristol had a lot of visitors during the first couple of weeks. Lots of family and friends. Grandma, Grandpa, and Carson were our first visitors in the hospital the morning after Bristol was born. Carson was so excited to meet his little sister. You could tell he was totally smitten with her immediately. He was such a proud big brother and he just adores his sister.
Carson stayed up at the hospital with us all day that first day. Grandpa and Grandma went home in the morning and we were able to spend some time together as a family of four. Carson was so well-behaved all day at the hospital and was just loving our new little family. We all were. :) We had a lot of visitors on that first day... Great Poppy, Papa and Nana, Aunt Lindsay and Dave, Uncle Danny, Aunt Sharon and Uncle Reno, Uncle Jason, Aunt Julie, Anna, Joel and Jonah.
On Tuesday afternoon around lunch time, the room we were staying in started leaking from the ceiling near the entrance. So we were switched to a new room. The new room was like a palace compared to the other rooms. It was so huge, spacious, bright, and wonderful! It had a whirlpool tub, even! It is the old water birthing suite, I guess. But it was so nice to be in such a beautiful room!
Tuesday was a tiring day with all the visitors and trying to figure out breastfeeding and getting to know our little one, but we were so excited for everyone to meet Bristol, too. She actually still did not have a name for the entire day. We knew her middle name and last name, of course. But we could not decide on a first name. Throughout the day, we narrowed it down to Bristol, Liliana, and Harper. By the time we went to sleep that night, we had narrowed it down to Bristol and Harper. But we still had no idea what it would end up being.
On Wednesday, we had to decide on her name. We ended up choosing Bristol. It just seemed to fit her best and we both liked the name a lot. We had just been hesitant to commit to it because we feared too much association with Bristol Palin... whom Kevin and Sara cannot stand. But we figure our Bristol will make the name look good. ;-P
We were discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, just after lunch. We were anxious to get home and get settled and to get Carson back with us! He had spent Tuesday night with Grandma and Grandpa again so Kevin could stay at the hospital. Sara was finding it slightly challenging/painful with the stitches to scoot in and out of the bed to get Bristol from her bassinet when she woke, so it was nice to have Kevin there to help out.
We settled in at home pretty well. The nights were rough at first, as Bristol had her nights and days mixed up, but that is pretty normal. She's still adjusting now, but she's doing pretty well, I think. We had lots of visitors during the first two weeks - Aunt Jeri and Uncle Mike; Kyle; Megan, Marty and Haleigh; Dianne; Great Poppy and Marion; Becky; Aunt Mary, Uncle Justin, Rebecca and Abram; Great Grandma Jackie; Lina, Sean and Vayla; Great Grandpa and Great Grandma Van; Uncle Chuck and Aunt Marcia; Bev and Brian; Aunt Ann, Michelle and Tyson. And of course, Grandma and Grandpa and Nana and Papa made several repeat visits during the first couple of weeks, too. :)
We are very fortunate to have such a wonderful family to welcome our little girl into. We are so thankful for all of the love and support everyone has expressed towards us and her. We couldn't ask for a better family and group of friends!
We made quite a few trips to the pediatrician and hospital during the first couple of weeks, too. At the 24-hour newborn screen in the hospital, Bristol's bilirubin levels were only 5.6. When we went for our first pediatrician appointment on Friday, when Bristol was 4 days old, her bilirubin level was 14... which meant she had developed breastfeeding jaundice. Most likely due to my milk not coming in until Wednesday night and not really fully coming in till Thursday afternoon. So Dr. Akrawi wanted us to feed Bristol every 2 hours and to start supplementing 1 or 2 ounces after every breastfeeding... starting Friday afternoon and ending Sunday afternoon/after we got her bilirubin checked again. After speaking with the lactation consultants, we decided to supplement with pumped breastmilk, rather than formula. This meant that Sara was to nurse Bristol, then go pump immediately while Kevin fed Bristol 1 or 2 ounces of pumped breastmilk. And we were supposed to start this routine every 2 hours... which meant by the time she finished feeding and then the bottle, Bristol had only 20-40 minutes "downtime" before having to wake her and start all over. She handled it well at first, but eventually just was plain not hungry and was refusing to eat so soon. It was an exhausting weekend for all of us, to say the least. We went up to Hurley hospital on Sunday morning to have her bilirubin checked again. It was still 14. It wasn't coming down, but it wasn't going up either (which is very good). We were able to stop the supplementing and return to nursing on demand, which was very much a relief. We then had to go back to Dr. Akrawi's office on Wednesday to have it checked again - it was down to 12. We went back the following Monday to have it checked again and it was down to 11. We haven't had to go back to have it checked since it was going down steadily, but slowly.
We also made some time for some fun stuff during Bristol's second week. We wanted to make the most of our time together with Kevin home. So we did some shopping, made a trip to a local park, played outside as much as possible, and did lots of swimming in our pool. It was so fun and Bristol did awesome!
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