I had so many clothes all ready for Sophie, just hanging in her little wardrobe, waiting for her to come home, envisions in my mind of all the future fun I'd have dressing her up cutely in her little dresses and cute little onsies.
Flashback to the day after Sophie was born: we didn't sleep at all in the hospital, but Sophie was eating great, peeing/pooing normally, all her vitals checked out, so we wanted nothing more than to check out and go home. We didn't see any reasons to stay in the hospital one more day.
By the time we got the dr. to issue dishcharge orders, pack up our stuff, etc it was about 8pm on Saturday, February 2nd. Sophie had a bit of jaundice, so we were waiting for her labwork to come back before we'd know if we would be allowed to leave. Sophie was sleeping, so I had her two "going home" outfits laid out on the bed while we waited for the nurse to come give us the green light to go home.
As I sat there, I realized that one of her going home outfits was too big. My sisters and I were big babies and a friend of mine just recently gave birth to a baby that didn't fit into any newborn outfits from day one. So I had brought two outfits: one size newborn and another 0-3 months. Sophie was little when she was born, so the 0-3 month outfit was completely too big.
That left me with only one other option: a short sleeved dress to be worn with tights and a small little cropped cardigan. Life Lesson: Don't pack a short sleeved dress for a baby going home in the middle of winter, tights don't fit newborn babies, and cropped cardigans are really not functionally at all. It was raining out that night and freezing cold. To give myself some credit, I expected to be taking Sophie home the next day at 11am and not at 9pm at night.
I figured I'd just have to put her in her dress and cover her real tight with a blanket until we got her to the car where we could put on the heater and make sure she stayed warm.
Then the nurse came in with a wheelchair (for me), our signed discharged papers and stood there waiting for us to go down to the car. I wasn't exactly ready to be rushed out so quickly. I figured they would come in and tell us we had the green light and then they'd give us some time to get ready. This wasn't the case.
So, I sat in the chair, the nurse handed me the baby, and we set off to the parking lot. Mind you, at this point Sophie was still swaddled in her hospital blanket and the outfit the hospital put her in right after she was born. It just so happened that birth outfit was a shirt and a diaper. No pants, no socks.
The nurse made a comment to me as we were leaving "Don't let anyone here know I let you leave with the hospital's swaddle blanket". I covered her up with the blanket we brought so that the other nurses wouldn't see us leaving with their blanket.
As we got to the doors exiting the labor and delivery unit, a siren started going off and nurses came out of nowhere running toward us. I immediately thought we were going to be in trouble for leaving with the hospital's blanket.
It turns out, all babies born in this hospital have a little chip taped on their leg to prevent anyone from taking them from the unit. In other words, an alarm to prevent any baby from being stolen from the hospital.
Our nurse forgot to remove Sophie's alarm once we were discharged. The nurse explained we were discharged and taking home our daughter and we were able to leave once everyone was convinced we weren't trying to steal our own baby.
We got to the parking lot, it was dark, raining, and cold. Needless to say I had to take off her swaddle blanket to secure her in her car seat, and that's when I realized we were taking home our baby wearing nothing but a hospital issued shirt and a diaper.
Fun Failure #2 - not packing a functional outfit to take home my baby in.
On the positive side: we got a free swaddle blanket out of it.
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