Recovery

Wow.  It has taken me almost a year to write about the recovery from my birth.  What does THAT say?  Writing now means I've forgotten 95% of it, but it just doesn't feel right to leave off without it.  I dunno.

So, yeah.  I had to have stitches.  Internal stitches.  Because Sophie apparently scratched me with those tiny newborn hands on her extremely fast exit.  And the doctor and resident had to insert a catheter to help with the actual stitching and to help with the healing progress.  The doctor says to me normally she'd like to keep the catheter in for 24 hours, but if I want to leave by the next day, then it can be removed by the next afternoon.

Now, DH and I had discussed the hospital stay thing just the week prior.  Barring any complications, I wanted to try to leave within 24 hours to keep the costs down since we were paying more out of pocket than we had to pay for the prior three births.  DH, "Stay as long as you need to stay.  Period."  Anyway, the doctor and resident and nurses all just sort of assumed we wanted to try to leave by the next day.  Um, well, yeah, if we can....  I wasn't sure what the insurance rules would be since we were admitted around 5:30pm, and the baby was born at 8:30pm.  Sometimes insurance companies will be all, "well, you know, we don't expect you to be checked out at 8:30 at night, so yeah, you can stay until 10am tomorrow, and we're all good."  But the doctors seemed to think we could, so we just assumed we would.

Well, after the small surgery and getting to nurse the baby and mowing down a sub and calling family and posting facebook, DH decided to go ahead and pick up the kids from our neighbor and let them go back to sleep in their own beds.  It was after 11pm before he really got them.  But then I was all alone with a baby and a catheter and well...kinda lonely. 

Here's where you get checked multiple times at night (although it wasn't as often as it used to be).  The nurses started getting concerned that the baby was kind of cold, so I was doing skin-to-skin contact, but the baby's temp wasn't getting as high as they wanted, so they took her off to the warmers.  Now I was alone with just the catheter!  And let me tell you, the catheter thing was WEIRD.  I could tell I needed to go and then suddenly, I didn't need to go, and sitting was interesting and well, catheters are just WEIRD.  Anyway, baby came back, and we nursed, and I kept trying skin-to-skin, but she eventually had to go back to the warmers again.

Let's skip to the next morning!  I asked if I was allowed a shower since I had that catheter, but I never really got an answer.  Well, when the nurses sent Sophie off to the warmers again that morning, it was suggested I go ahead and get breakfast.  And now breakfast is served buffet style, so I actually had to walk down to go get it.  Um...REALLY?  I'm sorry.  Making newly-birthed mothers walk down to a buffet is not my idea of hospital hospitality, you know?  The nurse did say she could just get me something and bring it to me, but I wasn't sure what I was in the mood to eat, so I got dressed (FUN with a catheter!) and hobbled on down.  As I'm passing the nurses station I suddenly get arrested by a nurse's voice, "WHERE ARE YOU GOING??  WHERE IS YOUR BABY!???"  Um...breakfast?  And...she's in the warmers..???  "Oh!  OK!"  Glad to see that the nurses are making sure I'm not being an irresponsible parent on the very first day and leaving the baby all alone in my room!

That morning was Sophie's last stay in the warmers, but the pediatrician and nurses and doctors all said that I may want to just consider staying the extra night so that they could keep an extra eye on her.  Um, sure. 
So, since I'm staying, am I getting the catheter out now, or do you want to keep it in the 24 hours as originally intended?  My delivering doctor wasn't around, and I never really got an answer--except that the catheter did not come out, so I figured THAT was my answer.

(Nurse later when seeing how I'd arranged the pee bag through my pajamas, "Did you dress yourself?  Oh...you're so cute!"  WHAT DID I DO WRONG???  Ah well--I was presentable enough for my buffet breakfast, and that's all I cared about!)

The resident came in to check me at one point--the same wet-behind-the-ears whipper snapper who'd helped sew me up and insert the catheter the night before--with all those "hey, how ya doin'" questions.  He asks me about my urination.  Um.  Fine.  Because of the catheter YOU installed last night?  Oh yeah....  (Really, proof that they are only looking at the girly parts and not at the face!)

So DH and the kids come and visit that evening, and the nurse finally comes in to give the baby a bath.  She hadn't had one yet since her temp was so low, and they didn't want her to get colder with a bath.  The kids thought it was cool to see the baby's first bath. 

When I asked about the catheter again, since it had been almost 24 hours, after a while, someone finally came in and told me that the delivering doctor had never actually written an ORDER for the catheter to come out.  So after a few phone calls and apparently faxes, I finally got to have that darn thing removed.  AND I didn't even ask--I got my butt in the shower, pronto!

I'm sorry, but to me, that post-birth shower is always one of the BEST.  To have to wait over 24 hours to shower was just plain cruel!!!  Oh....it felt so nice!

The pediatrician made an interesting comment during one of the check-ups--about how Sophia had come out so quickly.  She said, "She's going to be a spitter!"  And well, yes, Sophia actually did cough up colostrum while we were in the hospital.  Apparently, because she was not in the birth canal very long, her lungs did not properly compress, and it led to the spitting up.  Weird.

Oh!  And let's not forget that a day before the birth, I had caught a really, really nasty cold.  By that first afternoon, I was coughing and sneezing horribly and had actually lost my voice.  Recuperation from birth is a pain.  Recuperation while suffering from a bad cold is a @#$%.  Let's talk about horrible coughs right after giving birth--yeah, I had to change a lot that first week.  Fun.  It took me over three weeks to get over that cold.  I hadn't been that sick with a cold in ages.  I was most happy for the meal train my friend had set up because I'm sure we would have been eating sandwiches every did if not for that!

So, a year late, but there is what I remember.  Cold, tiny baby.  Sick, catheterized, stitched up me.  It's fun to remember a year later.