hospital routine improvement
As may be evident by my journal prolificness tonight, I'm feeling a lot better today ;) Not sure what the difference is: becoming more efficient, getting 7hrs of sleep, or maybe just not quite so many things to take care of (I've been having a lot of meetings with a lot of different hospital people), but whatever it is, I felt about half as busy as the day before. Maybe I will be able to talk to people who visit, answer phone calls and email, and maybe even get in a little reading after all, but no promises just yet ;)

One thing that's definitely gotten better over the past couple of days is pumping. Its still the single most time consuming thing I do, but its *much* easier now that my milk has come in and I'm not trying to suck up every little drop of colostrum with a 1cc syringe. Between pumping, hand expressing, and cleaning up with colostrum, it was probably taking about an hour on average every time. (when I had to do the clean up myself: I had people helping during daytime hours most of the time, so knock around 10 minutes off of my time spent :) My new average is probably around forty minutes when I have to do my own clean up, a half hour without, as I'm making enough milk now to just send it over in bottles w/out having to use syringes, and I no longer have to hand express. I usually just do a couple minutes of hand stimulation now. Multiply that by 8 times/day and its quite a bit of time saved :)

Also helpful that I know a lot of the staff now and they know me. I'm no longer expected to sign in, nor do I have to wait for nurses to free up every time I want to see the baby. Although one of them has talked to me about taking him out on my own, I don't feel ready for that just yet, but I do now go in and open the doors and talk to him and put my hand on his head without assistance.

Another really nice thing that it took me a day or two to learn is that they'll bring me lunch and dinner! All I have to do is tell the receptionist which meals I will be there for the day before, and a little lunch box arrives for me. Its pretty healthy for the most part: sandwich, juice, fruit, and milk, but they do throw in a cookie and chips, which so far I've had the willpower to avoid although I expect to break down on occasion ;) Since we keep late hours I still typically have one meal from the cafeteria, which will slow me down more once my mom isn't helping, but still, not a big deal, and not going to slow me down as much as having to go get three meals there!

And lastly, I'm getting much less stressed about driving the van, and am even getting better at parking it ;) My awesome house mates Rob and Anna have a full sized white van, which they've lent to me and converted to a "nest" for me during the days ;) I have a bed in the back, so every day so far I've managed to sneak in one hour long nap. This was particularly great today, because I was feeling especially tired and grumpy mid-day and a mom in the common room had brought in her three very hyper kids, in addition to the usual kid or two around, so it was really good to be able to get away from all the commotion and get some quiet time. Also nice that its right there in the parking lot: Patri and I had talked about renting a hotel room next to the hospital, but I don't have enough time between pumping for it to be useful.