Lilly's Story - The Homecoming

On Monday, May 24th, the doctors informed us that Lilly would be ready to go home early the next week. This was fantastic news to us. Peter needed to make a business trip to London and we decided that he should go ahead and get it over with while my aunt was here helping us. That way he could be here to help out after Lilly came home. He left on Tuesday, and the very next day I received quite a shock. Lilly was doing so well that they decided they would go ahead and release her that Friday! I was a little freaked. I mean, of course I wanted my baby to come home as quickly as possible, but Peter wasn’t there. He was going to miss this exciting event, and in my head I had imagined this memorable moment of him video taping us leaving the hospital and putting her in her car seat and the two of us driving our precious cargo home together. It was a strange and surreal feeling to walk out of that hospital alone with Lilly, put her in the car, and drive home. This happy time felt really lonely, regardless it is still a relief and a pleasure to say that on Friday, May 28th (exactly 3 weeks after her birth), Lillian Kate Claus came home.

Before Lilly was born I had made a wreath to go on the door and a special sign to let everyone know that our precious bundle had arrived. I relish in any excuse to use glitter and a hot glue gun! I had even planted some flowers in pink, green, and white around the door. Here’s my handy work:

Cooper was all smiles over his baby sister. I love to hear him say her name. He kind of stumbles over the “L”s and it is just adorable. He laughs at her when she is in her swing, and he has been yelled at a few times when he has tried to climb in the swing himself and have a little ride. I think that if he had any idea at this point how much she would cry and how much of mommy and daddy’s attention she would steal away, he might not have been so happy.

Being home with a newborn without Peter, I was a little apprehensive how the first night would go. This was also my chance to transition to strictly breastfeeding Lilly and breaking her of the bottle. To my surprise and delight, she slept quite well that first night and woke up 3 times to nurse, albeit 3 lengthy fussy sessions, and then went right back to sleep. The next day, Peter came home and we celebrated having our family all together again.

For the next 2 days, we all endured lots of crying, screaming, and tears from our now 4 week old baby girl. Any noise would startle and set her off. Once we had her settled in our arms, any change in position would upset her. She went from polishing off her bottles every 3 hours in the hospital to wanting to nurse every 1.5 to 2 hours, and would scream even during nursing. We thought that maybe she was getting used to being in a new setting, with more noise than her private hospital room. We thought that maybe she had a lot of gas and was starting to become colicky. We thought that maybe she was just frustrated that the milk didn’t flow as fast from me as it did from the bottle. After a couple of days, I noticed that I felt empty and that my milk just couldn’t keep up. Peter and I decided that as an experiment, we would only feed Lilly my breastmilk out of bottles to know how much she was getting. Sure enough she was a more content baby. So, to preserve my sanity I have given in and we are now just giving her my milk in bottles. I thought that I was going to show Lilly who’s the boss around here, and as it turns out, she is the boss!

And she knows it!