| 2/20/2005 | |
| Day 3, Party On Little Dude | |
| Again the day started with Julie coming in during the wee hours for her feeding. A substitute for the substitute neonatologist stopped in. He told us that Julie's numbers looked very good. We inquired as to the possibilities of her coming home in the morn but he seemed less than optimistic. He told us that the substitute doctor would be in to discuss her situation with us at some later time. The staff urged us to go out for a while. Hannah hadn't so much as left the ward since the spot incident three days ago so we decided to go to the party. We figured it would take our minds off of our situation. Once at the party, people wanted to see pictures of the baby so I tried to download some from my camera onto Hannah's parents' computer. Of course Winblows XP did not like my camera so I tried to download the update to the software in an effort to show the people something. Of course the phone didn't work (this had been a recurring theme at the Mandarano house for some time). So I went through the house ensuring that every phone was properly hung up; they were. I then went through the house unplugging all of the phones in an effort for allow the phone system to "reset". This was to no avail. Since the entire house was having this problem I started at the box and worked through the house checking all of the wire connections. Little did I know that the phone wiring was a complete disaster. It was almost impossible to track the phone lines through the house. The customer's side of the box was wired "sideways", that is, the green and black wires made up line one and and the red and yellow comprised line two (green and red usually make line one and the yellow and black ones line two). While I was running all over the place trying to get this fucking thing to work, the party was in full swing around me. Half of the people were pressuring me to participate in the party; the other half were pestering me for photos. Which faction do I piss off? I figured I shouldn't leave the phone system disfunctional and I wanted to get pictures up, so I kept working on the phones. I was just hoping that the children wrecklessly riding their scooters around me didn't knock me off of the ladder. After an hour or two the phones were working. I wound up rewiring most of the house. Of course, when I was done the kitchen phone did not work. I was unable to locate the wire the was responsible for that phone (it's spaghetti down there). Anyway, now that the required phone worked I downloaded the update to the software (which took forever; AOL sucks). I finally got the camera hooked up and communicating and got the pictures off of the camera and onto the computer. By this time pretty much everyone had left. Great, I was grimy, sweaty, exhausted, frustrated, contaminated with fiberglass and had blown off my chance to relax for the first time in days only to get the pictures up when it was too late. Remind me to never do any more good deeds. As if all of that crap weren't enough, I wouldn't hear the end of the kitchen phone malfunction for the two weeks it took for me to get back there to fix it. Never mind that I have a new-born infant to care for, that fuckin' phone has to work, dammit (despite the fact that there is a fully functional cordless phone within 10 feet of it). Next time I'm going to just play ignorant, leave the phones completely non-functional, and let them pay the phone company $80/hour to come in and fix it for them. As Hannah is so fond of saying, "No good deed goes unpunished". We went back to the hospital. While we were out we had missed one of Julie's feedings. The nurse had fed her formula *gasp*. We knew that this would happen, but we were very concerned since the La Leche Nazis had told us that this would be the end of the universe. Once the baby had had formula she would never again drink from the breast. Boy were they wrong. She not only returned to the breast as if nothing had happened, but she almost ripped Hannah's nipple off in the process. Most of the nurses we spoke with had said that they had switched off when feeding their kids. There doesn't seem to be any problem whatsoever. Anyway, to our surprise Julie stayed with us for a good chunk of the time. We surmised that the neonatologist did not know that we were going to be staying in the hospital and had spoken about coming into the nursery for feedings based upon us coming from home. Anyway, the nurses were pretty lax with us. They wanted to keep Julie some of the time but by and large when she came into our room for a feeding she stayed their for a couple of hours. Often she was there until her next feeding. We had to be sure that Julie was back in the nursery when the doctor came in though, lest he explode. |
|
| View Photos For This Date | |
| << Previous Date | Next Date >> |