To say the past 48 hours have been surreal isn’t doing A’s birth justice. I’ve stated before that going through this twice is just plain weird. J and I have the same common point of reference, and all three kids were born at the same hospital.
With MAM’s birth, J and I both recalled that all four of us (both birthparents and adoptive parents) had nursery bracelets. The bracelet is the magic pass to the baby, and we were thrilled to be granted that. It meant that we could spend time with MAM while they slept.
When we arrived late Friday night (maybe it was Saturday morning) MB told us that there were no bracelets for us. J had asked, and the nurse said that each baby gets two adult bracelets, period. We were bummed, but obviously respected hospital policy.
Yesterday we spent the majority of the afternoon and part of the evening in with J. Baby A slept basically the entire time–and there were times where the three of us were snoozing too. We didn’t talk about much, just sort of hung out. And J and I fell into the rythm of the co-mothering thing with did with MAM. Taking turns feeding, me doing the diapers, her charting what’s going on. Weird if you look at it from the outside I’m sure, but natural.
Having been through it once though, J mentioned one thing to me–that it completely sucked to be in the hospital over night after MAM was discharged to us. That if she could, she’d like to be discharged on the day she signed the paperwork.
We completely understood that, so the paperwork is set to be done tomorrow at 10am.
Today she asked that we time MAM’s visit with Z’s, so we did that this morning. While we there, I was able to sit on the chat with the ped, which was cool–the babe is doing just fine. The hospital social worker paid a visit, and the issue of hospital wristbands came up. Turns out, one of the adoptive parents has to have a wristband in order to get into the nursery to get the discharge instructions. So before we left got that all straightened out, and I got a wristband (MB surrendered his). On the way home, BgK told me that that’s what he remembers from MAM’s birth–that J and I were the ones who had wristbands. (really, I’m not egocentric much)
In a way, it feels presumptuous to be posting all about this before it’s a done deal. From the day she told us about the baby (back in November), though, we’ve been coming to terms with the fact that one way or another, this baby will be in our lives. Maybe as our son, but always as MAM’s brother.
