Easy Like Sunday Morning

We made it to Sunday morning, which at one point back on Wednesday or Thursday would have seemed about as possible as trying to land a hand glider on Jupiter. Yesterday was a sublime day with lots of quiet moments with my baby and my husband. We love laying her body on ours, and when I see her wiggling around on the OUTSIDE of my stomach it seems like the exact same movements I used to see her make inside my stomach. I love the closeness we used to share and having her here so I can see her face and her expressions is even better.



I can't believe we are going home tomorrow. I feel excited and anxious about getting her in the car and then trying to get up the stairs when I get home. I am looking forward to getting to sleep in my own bed with Jeff, instead of in a hospital bed with Jeff on a Daddy cot across the room. I am also excited to have a relaxing routine with Sadie in our house. It gets easier to imagine everyday life as the pain and discomfort subsides. The nurses on our floor just changed shifts, and we met our nurse for today, Doreen. Doreen asked about my birth experience and Jeff mentioned our journey to Sadie. When he mentioned that I was stuck in triage for 3 hours after the doctor agreed to admit me because the labor and delivery floor was too crowded, Doreen mentioned that on Sadie's birthday the hospital set a record for the highest number of births in a single day. Incredible. This hospital is always busy-- it has 10-12,000 births every year, so the volume is always there. But there existing record on the day of Sadie's birth? No wonder it took so long to get a room and an epidural. Also, when I got out of surgery they were supposed to put these leg warmers on my legs that would keep me from getting a blood clot. My nurse asked for them 3 times and I never got them. I knew that I should have told them that both Jeff and I are lawyers so maybe they would have been afraid of a lawsuit. I am not sure how I feel about giving birth in such a high volume place, even if its reputation is that it's the best women's hospital in Illinois and ranked 18th in the country. It makes me nervous that there were so many women vying for those resources on the day I gave birth. (Does someone who has a C-section give birth? I was thinking the correct phrase is "gave myself over to birth." Can you tell that I still have very strong feelings about the C-section?)

I am heartened that everyday so far has gotten easier. The pain from having my uterus cut out of my body, laid on my chest and put back together again lessens a little everyday. I now can go almost 6 hours on a single Norco instead of the 4 hours I could tolerate just yesterday. Let's pause here for a little story about the C-section:

I was prepped for surgery and they put up a curtain so that I could not see what they were doing. Tears were streaming down my cheeks into my ears because I was laying on my back for the first time in months. (Pregnant women are not supposed to lay on their backs after the first trimester because of the pressure that the growing fetus puts on the vena cava, which in turn makes it difficult for mom to breathe.) One of the anesthesiologists (the one with the hairy chest as I foggily recall) asked me why I was crying at one point, and I said, "are you seriously asking me that?" He said, "we do this all day everyday." I said, "well, I don't." Anyway, looking back I would probably think twice before being snarky to someone in charge of my pain medication, but I digress.

Anyway, the C-section progressed and I kept saying I could feel more than I thought I should feel. I have to say that this got the doctors' attention. Once they got Sadie out and assured me orally that she was fine, but the neo-natal doctors had to clean out her lungs, I started to get a little panicky. By "a little panicky" I mean that I had a full out panic attack on the table. I started telling the resident (woman without the hair chest) that I had to get up right now. I was so sure that I was going to be able to reasonably explain why I had to get up and go get my daughter and get something proper to eat. The resident put her eyes right next to mine and said in a very stern voice, "you are in surgery and you cannot get up. You are not getting up."

I was pissed. I decided I needed another angle.

When Resident Without Chest Hair put her face next to mine again, I said in my most rational voice, "I need anti-anxiety medication right now." She said, "I can give you anti-anxiety medication, but you won't remember anything and I don't want to take that away from you."

At that point, I was out of tricks. I decided maybe I just needed more information. Dr. Hairy Chest swung by to see how I was doing and I said, "I need to know what is taking so long." (I was of the mind that getting the baby out was the point and since she was out, I thought we should be done.) Dr. H.C. said, "I hear you've been asking to get up and what's taking so long. You can't go anywhere right now, because they have to put your uterus back in."

Put. My. Uterus. Back. In.

That was a lot to process in my precarious position. So many questions. Why is it out? Out of what? Why is that necesssary? Is this why I had to sign a consent form? Where the hell is my baby? Back in?

While I am all for telling the patient the truth, is it the best practice to tell a patient having a panic attack that her major reproductive organ is currently OUTSIDE of her body cannnot be an approach signed off by the American Medication Association. (Neither is that chest hair all hanging out, but that's an infringement of a different kind.) I believe at that point I lost all semblance of calm and started asking for oxygen, which was being pumped into my nose at a medically acceptabe level.

So, that's a little Sunday afternoon story about the road to Sadie's debut into breathing oxygen.

In addition to the ongoing processing of the entire experience, there are lots of challenges and joys every hour. I want to keep/make a record for the following reasons. (1) I want to remember this so that I may be able to help any future mommies who, in the post-birth aftermath, are trying to make sense of their experiences so I can give as many details as possible; (2) I also want to have as many of the details to share with Sadie in case she's ever interested; and (3) I want to be sure that I remember this whole process as realistically as possible in case we ever do this again.

To that end, here are my favorite parts:

• Watching her exquisite face all day long
• Listening to her funny sounds: some days an eaglet, some days a piglet, other days a little duck
• Seeing Jeff and Sadie interact and develop their relationship
• Changing her diaper and seeing her body start to work out its systems
• Breastfeeding and seeing her doze off between sucks, but become a fierce little tigress if I try to take her off the breast
• Having her sleep on my chest and make those movements I fell in love with months ago
• Seeing her little hands in her gloves that protect her from scratching her delicate skin
• Her cute little boogers

As for the hard parts, that's another post. Let's end on a high note for now. It's time to go change a diaper and get the boob on!