Katy arrives home

It's been said before (sometimes by me) that my wife is not the most patient person in the world and, true to form, she had no desire to wait around in hospital for 4 days after Katy arrived in the world. This morning I arrived at the hospital, after dropping Ella at childcare, and it was clear Nat wanted to go home. To be honest, I don't think we were gaining much by being there, so I fully agreed and we set about extracting ourselves from the maternity ward.

Extracting is a good word for it, because it wasn't easy. It wasn't as though they objected to us leaving, it was just that they couldn't get themselves together to sign all the requisite forms etc to let us go. One nurse would tell us we could go, then another would come in and decide we had to weigh the baby, then the baby-weighing nurse said there was no need but the other nurse held her ground. This erupted into full-scale war within the maternity ward, so one nurse went off to lunch and the other one couldn't find any forms. All in all it took longer to get out of the hospital than it took to give birth (and as far as I was concerned was significantly more painful). The worst thing is that Nat has to drop back in tomorrow to get Katy checked out again -- hope she gets out alive!

Anyway, we did finally get home and had a nice family reunion in our house (see self-timer photo). Ella is very keen on helping out with Katy -- holding, carrying, advising us when to put her into the cot or the bassinet -- but in most cases does more harm than good. And, of course, they both decided to melt down simultaneously at dinner time this evening. Apart from that it all went smoothly and we're looking forward to settling back into a normal life.