A Night At The Hospital

I was on call this past Wednesday, covering the OB area. Because Alex has soccer practice on Wednesdays, Natalie would not have been able to go to swim team practice. Patrick can only be at one place at one time. Instead she wanted to come to work with me. If I had been on Trauma call, I wouldn't have agreed. I wanted to be able to spend some time with her and not just leave her in my office or a little room somewhere, all by herself. OB tends to be less busy.

This is the picture I took of Natalie before we left home. She was all decked out in her "cool" sunglasses that Alex had given her. She is clutching her sleeping bag and carrying her overnight bag (red with a shark on it, of course--last year's birthday present from her Aunt Melissa). She looked so enthusiastic and so laden with packages that I had to preserve this moment in time with a photo.

We picked up some food from Olive Garden for a late lunch and for our dinner. Even though she had eaten a sandwich for lunch already (I didn't have lunch yet), she managed to eat most of her kids' Fettucine Alfredo when we ate at about 3pm. She barely ate anything at dinner, but I figured that she had eaten plenty already. She did almost finish off the breadsticks, though.

We watched a little TV when we ate. The rest of the time she watched movies or read a book on the iPad. Here in this picture, she is eating the popcorn I popped for her while watching a movie. She was cold so I grabbed a blanket and placed it around her. Basically, I was spoiling her.

I was on the computer when she was doing all of this, either reading articles or email, or surfing the internet. She kept asking me if I had done any work yet. Later, when we went to my call room, she set up her sleeping bag on the floor and grabbed one of the pillows. I usually don't go to bed until after 10pm when I'm on call because I don't sleep well there unless I'm exhausted. Because her bedtime for school is 8pm and we're transitioning to that this week, lights were out at 8pm for both of us.

My resident awakened me with a phone call at 10pm, after which I had a really hard time going back to sleep. Thankfully, Natalie didn't wake up. I woke up again at 3am for a twin delivery in the OR. Natalie did wake up then, but went back to sleep. When I awakened her just after 6am (again, because we're transitioning to school sleep and wake times), she could have slept more.

She went to morning conference with me, and then I took her to Starbucks for breakfast. We waited there until Anthony texted me just after 8am to pick him up from Cross-Country practice (Patrick had dropped him off around 6:30am), then we went home. Natalie told me that she really enjoyed being at work with me. My first response was that of course she enjoyed herself, I spoiled her! I was thrilled that she enjoyed spending time with me. It is only a matter of time before she grows up even more and doesn't want anything to do with her Mama. Let's just say that both of us are enjoying our time together while we can.