Tuesday, 21 August 2012

Everyone Warns you.....


We have been home from the hospital since Sunday, so glad to finally have Layton home with us at least at our condo and not visiting him in a hospital through 1 inch glass, twice per day.
No one really told us anything on leaving the hospital, the nurse did her best to try and explain a few things to us about cleaning the umbilical cord and such but not as much as we had expected. Nonetheless, just excited for the walk home.

Our first day/night was learning about our little guy, how to feed, what to do when changing him etc Most of the day consisted of skyping our families, showing off our perfect little man, and taking turns holding him and not letting go. The first night we were able to get the feeding down pat, and we are lucky that he is good at eating and no real issues there yet. Although there were no concerns our fist night it was still hard to fall asleep not knowing if we would miss anything.

Monday we had running around to do, and having to go to Copa airlines and change our tickets, and add Layton to our tickets home. I cant say enough about the airline, they were nothing but accommodating to us and helped us get this done in no time flat, after this, and the staff of Copa airlines taking pictures of Layton, we were off to get him his first set of passport pictures at a local pharmacy. Thank goodness that Alana had her assistant Hidemi come with us who could translate what we needed because without her we had no clue.

We are always surprised how little English is spoken here, although there are quite a number of English speaking people in Panama, we are amazed how little you can get done without knowing Spanish, and for us a frustration because our only grasp of the Spanish language is to ask for a beer or where the bathroom’s are.

Last night Layton was a little more “vocal” and between Daniel and I trying to figure it all out needless to say there was almost no sleep last night. At least I was able to doze off for a few hours but for the last two nights Daniel has gone without any sleep at all.
We realized quickly last night how alone we could feel being down here without our family and friends, just to ask questions about the baby, what we were doing right, or wrong. It is a bit overwhelming to say the least. With every minute that goes by today I realize how much work that it is to have a baby, and how much everything you think you know just goes completely out the window and you end up being a blubbering mess half the time.

After only 1 breakdown from me this morning, we were able to walk Layton down to the hospital where he had his check up with the pediatrician. Dr Abbott (fluently speaking English) told us he was doing great. All within the normal ranges for a baby, this was a relief from the two of us. Even though we knew he was perfect to us second guessing everything has been part of our life over the last week down here and at least we were able to breath a little bit better after this visit. The Doctor gave us a prescription for some vitamin drops that babies take down here and suggested we change our formula to a more “gentler” one for his stomach.

Tomorrow we have an appointment with the Canadian consulate and hopefully they let us know exactly when we are able to take little Layton home back to Canada to see his family. We hope to come back on the 28th of August, but knowing how things work down here we are just keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best….



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