i'm baaaack

Had a lot of back and forth in my mind before I committed to three weeks of staying at the postpartum care center, but then after the c-section I decided I'll need the whole four weeks. Which changed my discharge date from 10 December to 17 December...But then, due to Petra's chicken pox, the baby and I got quarantined from the rest of the center. I had to stay in my room all day and night, with the nurses coming in every now and then to provide medical checkups on the baby and give me some time to have a sponge bath and eat.

I was essentially on lockdown, and there're just my set of arms to rock the baby when he gets fussy right before bedtime. So I would rock him for 2-3 hours and be completely alone at night when the baby became wide awake and I felt like the only person awake in the world with him. This experience was so not what everyone else told me staying at a postpartum care center was supposed to be like. People who'd experienced it said it's like being an empress for the duration. Well, I felt more like a prisoner. So. I decided to early discharge despite the stated financial penalty. As it turned out, the center personnel had been talking amidst themselves. I mean, all of my meals changed from nice ceramic to disposable containers like I'm a leper! The personnel also came to the conclusion that it's best for me just to leave early since, to quote one nurse who chatted with me as she bathed Jude, "it's so sad that [your] first time doing zuo yue zi is like this."

So it's great that I finally allowed Daniel to argue my case about being discharged early without being fined. Not only was I not fined, but they deducted a week's cost of baby care from the bill and threw in three days of three delivered meals for me starting Monday. Overall, I'm still really impressed by how considerate the center's operation is.

Now I'm less than a day's stay back home, and it's both calming and overwhelming at the same time. My husband is really bad at housekeeping. Nobody's going to get typhus from lack of sanitation, but eventually someone might trip and fall amidst the clutter. Or maybe I'm just hypersensitive because having things neat and minimal help me feel better. A lot better. Which is why, instead of resting when the baby is sleeping, I've been cleaning as much as I can and organizing. I know I need to spend my time and energy wisely so my body will still continue to heal as fast as possible and my milk supply won't be affected, so keeping that in mind.

The amount of gifts from some local moms surprised me. I made a thank you list and hopefully they can know how much I appreciate their thoughtfulness. I'm a bit touched that even though I still feel like I have not much of a "tribe" in Hsinchu, I do have people here who seem to like me. And I might be in fact forging local friendships.

We'll see how tonight/late night goes. When he is awake, Jude looks around my bedroom and I wonder if he registers that we're in a new place now. That we're home.