STEP FOUR: One word... Grandmothers.

Truthfully, this step needs to be bumped up to position number 2 and really ought to get more than 1/12 the credit for pregnancy recovery. Can't say enough about how wonderful Josephine's grandmothers have been. It's beyond helpful to have someone to whom you can hand an unburped, unchanged, fussy baby immediately after feeding, allowing you to fall back asleep knowing that baby will be burped, changed, unfussed, coo-ed, ooh-ed, and ahh-ed to, followed by endless rocking and snuggles. Whenever grandmothers are around, Josephine gets the love and attention she deserves. I wish I had the energy to bestow equal affection upon her 24/7! They are amazing!

My mom stuck around for several days post-surgery, and Sean's mom came to help out during this last week. They both deserve a huge thank you from Sean and I (and naturally, Josephine sends big cuddles and kisses and is demanding to know when she will see you both again)...

This is a pic back from when we first got her home and did a little jaundice prevention. I promise we don't make a regular habit of baking our baby.

This is Josephine assuming her favorite sleeping position (I don't think either of them moved for four days).

As a thank you to her favorite ladies, here's a little Josephine footage to soothe the grandma's soul, in case still photos aren't scratching the itch adequately. A warning: I don't know how to edit footage yet, so this is a bit lengthy and will probably err on the tedious side for non-grandmotherly folks. So I put a still photo down below for everyone else.

As you might guess by seeing the photo, Sean and I are amazed that Josephine still has two eyeballs. You should see the vigor with which she claws her face in efforts to catch her fist/thumb/whateverfingerpossible in her mouth.
Also, as you can kind of see in this picture-- she does much better when she uses her right hand to push her left hand into her mouth. It's pretty much the only way she can keep the left hand from flying out. I think she had a lot of practice with this in utero, because even in the hospital nursery she alternated between screaming and sucking on her fists as she waited for me to get stitched up and moved to the postpartum unit.