The First Days

I will continue relating the beginning of C's life and eventually, hopefully, will catch up to present times. Please humor my flashbacks for now, will you?
After the adventure of her birth, C's was understandably tired and slept for pretty much the whole following day. She just met with her Godmother, who was asleep on a couch outside the OR, before retiring for bed. Daddy wheeled her out of the room, introduced her with the emotion and extravagance that are so typical of him: "Here's da baby." Then we all crashed. Or at least C and I, while Daddy went back home on the subway (he refused to take a cab even though it was about 3:00am!) where he met my parents and his mom all waiting for news. That was the zeroth day. Yes, they start counting at zero. Like computer scientists. Weird...
The rest of the stay in the hospital was fortunately uneventful. I looked terrible and was not allowed to shower before day two because of the staples holding me together. Recall that I had been in labor for two and a half day before that, which means that I was covered in pretty much everything a human boday can excrete. I still resent those pictures, though I could at least blame the smell on C. She had to spend the last 24 hours of our stay getting a tan due to the very pretty yellow hue of her skin, but I was allowed to go see her and nurse her whenever I wanted. We got acquainted pretty fast and I only despaired trying to nurse her a couple of times, and I don't think I cried at all. Amazing. I finished grading my students' problem sets in the mornings there since I was invariably awakened at 5:00 by doctors or nurses doing rounds, taking my temperature, etc. C's bilirubin levels having returned to normal, we were all sent home on Wednesday, finally.
I can not be grateful enough to my parents for staying with us and helping. They did everything! I started taking walks right away, not wanting to remain an invalid any longer. These walks probably greatly exercised my parents' patience since they proceeded at the speed of a procession. I mean a solemn procession, not the ones you see young priests run at the beginning of mass in parishes where the attention span of the faithful is deemed extremely short. Nursing was very painful and our second night at home was terrible. C's would not latch on and cried disconsolately and I didn't know what to do! Daddy tried cup feeding (I fortunately had pumped some milk during the day), but that's not easy either! It was only that one night though. From then on, C settled into a 5+4 hours night rythm which was very agreeable to everybody. She also decided that crying was not necessary since I was sleeping right next to her, so she would just make little noises to wake me and tell me she was hungry. She went to daily mass right away and instantly made a lot of new friends there! She has since always been really good in church. She doesn't sleep through mass anymore, but she very rarely cries or fusses. Very quickly, she started wanting to hold her head when in the burping position. Since she was very unstable at first, we had a lot of baby head to mommy nose encounters... I learned to turn my face away or shield it. I remember those first days as being filled with joy. I remember going to bed and looking at that little person sleeping in the co-sleeper and not being able to believe how good God was. I would put my hand on her little belly to make sure she was still breathing and feeling her all warm and peacefull would fill my heart with love, and my breasts with milk... Those usually come together. Well, in those days, my breasts would spew milk pretty much anytime they felt they could. Trying to get dressed after a shower without putting milk all over my clean clothes became my new hobby, as well as nocturnal avoidance of wet spots on the sheets and subtle shirt inspections for dark circles. The joys of motherhood!