5 days old

Thao and Katie had to stay in the hospital for 3 nights. It was really hard for me because I had to go home each night and sleep alone. Oh... yeah it was hard for Thao too! She was so hurt after the operation but still had to take care of Katie all night and get very little sleep. The nurse said that most people just give their babies to the nurses to take care of at night, but even though Thao was so hurt and crying, she still wanted to breastfeed Katie. I am so proud of Thao, she is really a great mom!




The French hospital was really good. All the nurses were friendly, someone with a big white chef hat comes to give you the food that you ordered for your meal, and everything is really clean. You can see how happy Thao is to eat her shrimp dinner with rice and soup!




For the first few days Katie slept a lot, but now she is starting to be more active...




A cute smile and wave to the camera heheh




Actually Thao was scheduled to stay in the hospital for 4 nights, but we went home earlier because everything is much easier when we are all back home...

There are a few Vietnamese customs about new babies that are strange to me... One is that when you come home from the hospital, you need to place a dot of lipstick on the baby's head, and in the bag (that the person carrying the baby must carry) you have two chopsticks and a knife... A knife?? Yeah, I found out the hard way. "Oh Kyle, get the lipstick from the bag's front pocket..." So I put my hand in and searched around. OMG!!! A knife! Ouch!! Lucky I was in the hospital already...

Another thing is that when you bring the baby home, you have to cover her face and quickly go inside so no neighbours see. Then you have to be very careful who visits, because if someone with a "bad soul" visits the baby, she will cry a lot for one month... So better not to let any friends or neighbours come over. One of Thao's best friends messaged her that she wanted to come to visit and see Katie, but she wasn't sure if she had been good enough so she didn't want to come...

Thao's mom is staying with us now to help out. It was interesting to see how good she is with babies, after raising 5 daughters and more recently taking care of grandchildren every day. Thao said her mom wrapped up the baby tight like she was making a Banh Tet (rice cake wrapped in banana tree leaves), and Katie slept for so many hours.




Now we are getting a nurse to come to our house every day to give Katie a bath. At first I thought that was kind of silly, shouldn't the parents just learn how to do it themselves? But again it was amazing to watch someone with a lot of experience do everything. We were surprised at how hot the bath water was, but Katie loved it. Maybe she will be an Olympic swimmer some day... The nurse does everything so fast, not just a bath, but clean eyes, clean out nose, clean mouth, disinfect the belly button, change into new clothes and get a massage. And after that Katie is very clean and happy!

Well, everything is going fine now, and it really helps a lot that we are both home all day and Thao's mom is here too. Katie is a real joy, and no matter how tired you are, you just look at her cute little face and know that it is all worth it.