Dispatch from Room 26 - One Day Later

Quick summary:

• Everyone is tired, happy and healthy.
• Alice is recovering nicely.
• Daphne is doing really well with feeding. 
• I am four diaper changes wiser than I was yesterday.
• We leave the hospital late tomorrow morning.

I could spend paragraph after paragraph filling in the details of Daphne's first day but nearly all the requests we've gotten are for pictures and not for my insomnia-assisted rants. Besides, readers even with the slightest knowledge of newborns would have helped you guessed what the description consisted of: eating, sleeping and pooping- and that's just my last  24 hours.

For Alice and Daphne they had a similar cycle also includes periodic visits from the nurses & occasional doctor. Each time there is something different measured but the only correlation I can find for when the appointment occurs is that they wait for the most inconvenient moment, such as when Alice finally falls asleep.  My favorite so far (and it's happened twice) is when they knock on the door just to say hello & to ask if Alice needs anything. The funny thing is the only thing she needs at that point is the sleep that was interrupted to answer that question.

Look at how tired everyone is!

Anyway, our audience is just ravenous for pictures. Pictures, pictures, pictures. Despite my lifetime membership to the United Autoworkers & Shutterbugs - Local 88 union I only have a few to share right now. I know. I'm surprised, too. 

Before I get to those one thing I'm already miffed I didn't start was a photographic progression of the baby's head shape and facial profile. Babies come out with such pronounced cranial deformation that periodic documentation of that would have been valuable for its entertainment alone. It would be like watching this cartoon dog's face recovering from that punch in slo mo:

This is kind of what a baby's face experiences in the birth canal

Anyway, I think it's already too late because the most pronounced changes have already happened. In the last 24 hours our daughter's face is looking less like the Swamp Thing & more like one of those perfect babies from an Anne Geddes portrait- minus the durian or other produce. 

I will send out a more proper collection of shots by the start of next week. I'll make sure the album is properly curated- which is code for saying I won't post more than 25 - 30 shots. My paternal love & third day of poor sleep puts me in danger of posting so much more. I gotta keep that impulse in check. Enjoy these in the mean time.

This is the sight I woke up to. So it all wasn't a dream!

This was taken a second time because Alice wanted at least one of us to smile. I still wasn't successful.

And to save the best for last... The one below. Alice must be in love with our daughter. I have never seen my wife this happy to be up at 6:15 in the morning- and we've had over 3,000 together!

I love this picture & what it means for my future.