First Week like Fire

Man, they sure don't give you a lot to go on. A matter of minutes after Mr. Hunter arrived the hospital was already showing us the door, two nights in partially subsidized Birthcare and then its out on the streets. That's rough on a Dickens-like level.

And they don't tell you what to do, y'know? Not even a few little hints. So it's hardly surprising that little Bean (a nickname we gave the baby because... well, because our brains are all messed up on adoration and sleep deprivation,) spent about as much time in the hospital as he did at home in his first week.


First he was having trouble feeding; being a little premature his mouth was on the small side, and being a little clueless we had no idea what went where. No food led to crying, crying led to sheer bedlam, that led to hospital.

The next day, I don't know, something else happened and we ended up back in hospital, this time with the little man under some big badass lights to toast some jaundice out of his system. I don't remember exactly why jaundice is so bad, but it does make his skin go all yellow, so it was as much an aesthetic decision as anything.


In the following days they brought us back a bunch of times for the same stuff - details escape in the madness of it all - but two things became glaringly obvious: The staff at Starship children's hospital are saint-like wonderful medi-gods & the staff at the regular hospital are a bunch of pricks. Unfair blanket statements, I know, but screw it; it's my blog, and anyone so inept and unpleasant as to motivate a worried mother and possibly ailing child to pack up and flee the ward at 3AM deserves whatever they get.

Hunter's second week of being seems to be shaping up a lot better, everyone's finding their groove (and hopefully a little more sleep.) The chorus of 'don't worry, it gets better' might not have been filthy lies after all.