Saturday, January 14, 2012

Fostering: the baby has landed!

We have a baby. She's a month old. She arrived at 8 p.m. on Thursday, four hours after we found out we were getting her, and will be here until at least Thursday, when there's some sort of court date, and at which point we'll probably find out if she's leaving soon or will be here a while.

She is two weeks younger than we initially said we'd take, but I'll work from home and stuff for the next two weeks, until she's old enough to go to daycare. Because we weren't expecting to take a baby so young, most of the clothes we have are too big for her. And because she's extra small - she weighs 7 pounds, 10 ounces - even the limited amount of zero-to-three-month stuff we happened to have is huge on her. Thankfully, we are friends with an extended family with lots of small kids, so I activated the phone tree and will have warm newborn-sized clothes pouring in soon. In the meantime, we have enough for a few days, and also it's a great excuse to snuggle her a lot.

Things I have learned in thirty-eight hours of parenthood:
  • Babies this young have no pattern. The first night, I was up with her for an hour and a half and Andy was up with her for an hour. Last night, she was up for half an hour around 2 a.m., then she slept until 7:30.
  • Having a baby in your house means there will always be a million baby-related things laying around everywhere.
  • You will always need to be doing a load of laundry.
  • Baby formula is pretty disgusting and turns white things tan and also costs two million dollars.
  • It is possible to love a baby with your whole heart immediately.
So, posting will probably be sort of light for the next little bit (till Thursday, at least). When she's sleeping, it seems more important to do laundry and take a shower and hang out with the dogs (who are confused by this new toy, to say the least) and stare mindlessly at the wall because I'm so tired. Thanks for understanding!

7 comments:

  1. !!!! I'm as excited about you getting a baby as I get when we get a baby. Hope that isn't weird :) Congrats!

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  2. i hope you get to enjoy her (i think it's a her right?) while you have her...in between the chaos :)

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  3. Teresa, it's not weird at all! MamaFoster, yes, she's a girl, and she is so precious. Andy's snuggling her right now. I cannot believe how tired I am after only two nights - and I'm hyperalert, so I can't nap! Hopefully if we get to keep her longer we'll find a rhythm so I can get some sleep.

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  4. Your last bullet point in that list made me AOL (Aww Out Loud.) Very exciting times, and that little kiddo is so lucky to have a place to crash for a while. :)

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  5. Hey Rachael, I just found your blog. We became foster parents in September. CPS placed a 6 day old in our home in late November (now she's 7 weeks old). It's been so fun learning all these newborn traits. Can't wait to follow along with you and your newborn. Blessings!

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  6. Hi Jak, I love your blog! Thanks for the good wishes. I'm sure we'll have an interesting ride!

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