The big day has come, and gone. Your baby is here! You’ve spent the last 24-48 hours admiring their tiny little toes and their perfect finger nails. You’ve traced the outline of their ear, brushed a finger tip over those perfect little lashes. You’ve cuddled them while they fed.

Your body hurts. You are exhausted. You are overjoyed.

Now it is time to go home.

You slowly pack up all the things that have been spread around your hospital room over the last day. You stuff it all in your bag, caring much less about perfectly folded clothes now than you did when you packed it.

You lift your baby up from the clear-walled bassinet and you place them gently in the carseat.

Image by Debs

You are nervous to tighten the car seat like the tech told you, but you do it. Your partner has already taken the bags to the car, and as soon as they are back, the three of you will be going home.

Home.

You head to the nurses station and get a final okay on the carseat. Someone snaps a picture of the three of you on your phone. Baby’s first car ride!

When you get home, you take the car seat out of the back of the car, you walk through the door, and you set the seat down in the foyer.

Oh. Shit.

They let you take this baby home? You don’t know what you are doing? It was fine in the hospital where you had the nurse to help but now you are home and who are you going to ask questions of? The thoughts are running frantic through your head. In all the planning you did, for pregnancy, birth, and parenting, somehow, you forgot about this moment.

Your first night home can be scary. There is no handy call button on your bed. Your meals aren’t delivered on a tray every few hours. If baby pees all over everything, it is you that will be doing the laundry.

What if that first night home didn’t have to be frightening?

Thats why we have created our Welcome Home add-on option. One of our postpartum doulas will be on call, just like our birth doulas. Your doula will come to your home in the late evening, usually at 9pm, and will stay until morning. You will have ten hours of support for your first night home. Ten hours of expert, professional, and judgement free support.

Our doulas will help you to unpack your hospital bag, check in about how feeding is going, and send you off to bed. If you are breastfeeding, she will bring the baby to you for feeds, but burp, change, and soothe baby after so that you can go back to sleep. If you are bottle-feeding, she will take care of baby through the night so that you can rest and recuperate from birth.

Your doula will settle your fears and calm your nerves. She will be there to answer your questions and help you with whatever you need.

Best of all? You can bring her back tomorrow night.