This is part 3 out of 3.
To read part one click HERE
To read part two click HERE
They wiped my son and wrapped him in a blanket then placed him in my arms.
My husband quickly got the video camera and began taping me as I held my child and blubbered about how much I loved him. I was the only person in the room who didn’t notice that he was not pinking up. In fact, he was beginning to turn the color of Barney. He was also blowing bubbles and grunting every time he tried to take a breath. But, as any mother would, I found my son to be perfect.
After hugging him to my chest like a football for a few minutes I asked my husband if he would like a turn. He put the video camera down and attempted to take him from me, then told me that he would just wait. It turns out that he was afraid to pick him up. His mom insisted that he hold our son and transferred him to David. He had his moment with his son, and then the nurse scooped him out of his arms saying that she needed to suction the fluid from his lungs.
They disappeared to the other side of the room which was partially blocked by a curtain and I was told to get ready to deliver the placenta. Ah, the placenta-such an amazing thing. I was expecting to deliver something that resembled a tiny chicken liver. The doctor tugged at my umbilical cord and yanked and began to break a sweat. I couldn’t understand the problem until I passed what looked like a skinned cow. This thing was monstrous! I was dumbfounded as I saw them drop it into a metal bowl. I asked them to bring it to me so that I could get a closer look but they wouldn’t. They just looked at me like I named it “my precious” and asked if they knew any good placenta-salsa recipes.
At approximately 6:45 pm my vagina went up on display for the entire hospital. I swear they were running tours through the thing. I lost count of people that sneaked a peek at it somewhere around 48. It was becoming apparent to them that having me deliver while not fully dilated was not such a good idea after all.
The corner of my cervix that hadn’t opened had been ripped when I finally did deliver and I was bleeding like a stuck pig. My epidural had worn off once again and I felt like they had a soldering gun in my gaping crotch which I had now nicknamed the Grand Canyon. My doctor had never seen anything like this before and had to call in a surgeon to have a look.
Enter Dr. Bongwater Hippie-hair. He walked in an apologized for the delay explaining that traffic had been hell on his way back from Woodstock but he got here as quickly as he could. He had a long gray braid that hung down to his butt and reeked of cigarette smoke and I was wondering what kind of doctor this was.
As I was debating whether or not to take this man seriously, he popped up between my legs wearing a headband with a light on it looking like he was about to go spelunking. I rolled my eyes as these two men examined my vagina like they were unlocking the key to the universe. I was losing interest and just wanted to know how my little man was doing.
David had already appeared at my bed to verify that he had spelled Nathan right. Then the nurse waited until he turned his back and whispered to me that she wanted to just “double check”. Seriously guys? To my knowledge there is only one spelling of the name. I kept hollering over asking how big he was, after seeing the size of my placenta I figured that he couldn’t weigh more than a pound or two because he never would have been able to fit! Finally they told me he was a whopping 8 pounds, 6.8 ounces and 23 inches long.
But Noël, he was a month early. Did you have gestational diabetes?
Nope. We just make big babies. They estimated had I made it to full term he would have been over 11 pounds, God help me had I been overdue!
Then I was snapped back to reality when I saw Dr. Hippie-hair coming at me with a needle that was about a foot long. They told me that they needed to numb up my cervix before they could stitch it up and not to be alarmed by the size, that it was only so long so that they could insert it vaginally and have it reach my cervix. I was fine with this; needles had never really bothered me. When they injected me however I felt like they had paper punched a section of my cervix. I winced in pain as they continued to inject me all around my tear. Every few minutes they would poke me in the crotch and ask me if I could feel it. Every time I could, and every time it got more annoying than the last. After about 15 minutes of this they realized that my cervix was not numbing up and that they would have to administer a third epidural.
A new anesthesiologist showed up this time. He smelled like gas and was wearing street clothes. He explained he’d been out on his Harley when his beeper went off and he had just arrived at the hospital. Really? Who cruises around on their hog in February? All of these random “staffers” showing up off the street helped confirm my theory that they were just charging a nickel per peek at my clam and were making bank.
He topped off my epidural and I felt my familiar friend making its way down my spine. I went to say something when I realized that my tongue wasn’t working properly; nor was my neck or jaw. Somehow my epidural had numbed me from my nose down. For the first time that night I was thoroughly freaked. I asked the doctor if that was ok and he tried to convince me that my tongue was fine.
“No ith’s naaauwt!” I wailed.
Then I started shivering uncontrollably and asked my nurse to “Pleath bring me a blanketh.”
She showed up with a heated blanket and wrapped it around me. As I warmed up I took note of the fact that I was being simultaneously fisted by two full grown men while my husband looked on in horror. Who knew you could fit so much up a vagina?? After an hour of this they had finally managed to get the 3 stitches in place and it was time to start repairing my episiotomy. That went quickly and my doctor made the generic comment that he was going to put an extra stitch in for David.
This must be listed in the first edition of “Bedside Manner for Physicians” as a go-to phrase because everybody I know who has gotten an episiotomy has reported their doctors saying this. Besides, after the parade that had just gone through my tunnel of love I knew it was going to take much more than just one extra stitch to repair the damage.
Finally it was all over and I had my son back in my arms. I couldn’t see much from where I was in my bed but I could hear nurses warning the night shift who had just arrived to be careful not to slip in the blood. The “c-section table” that had been brought in was now covered with bloody gauze and literal bowls holding nothing other than blood, then of course there was the placenta. It looked like there had been a live autopsy performed on top of it.
People began clearing out of the room gradually, my mother-in-law went home leaving just my husband and me. It was then that I realized that I had not peed in 19 hours. I was doing the mental math to determine how much fluid was in the three IV bags I had received along with the 4 HUGE bottles of water I had downed when I realized that I was in trouble. I didn’t really feel like I had to pee since I was still slightly numbed but I could tell by the 28 pounds of pressure that my bladder was full.
I pushed my light and in came my night nurse. She was ugly too! She had short brown curly hair and was also overweight. I explained to her that I needed to use the restroom and she looked at me with a glassy eyed look that screamed “I am a retard!” When she didn’t respond I realized I was going to need to be more precise with this special brood of characters that comes out to work the night shift.
“I need help getting to the bathroom.” I explained.
Still she just glared at me, looking as confused as if I had asked her to gently stroke my penis. What would it take to get through to these people!?
“I need you to help me get to the bathroom” I emphasized.
This snapped her out of her drooling stupor and she made a face at me.
“Do you really have to go?” she asked.
“Yes, I really have to go! I haven’t peed in 19 hours!”
Acting like she was incredibly inconvenienced she asked if I wouldn’t rather just have a catheter. Of course! Why wouldn’t I want someone to shove a tube up my pee hole when I could just go sit on a toilet? But on account of the fact that I always wanted to know what it would be like to pee like a boy, and this was as close as I would likely ever come without a sex change I agreed to the catheter.
She produced what looked like one of those brown coffee stir sticks and a cup and jammed it up my urethra with no consideration for how unforgivingly straight and sharp it was. I stared at the ceiling, mortified that my husband was watching this. Thankfully he had turned his back to let me “retain some dignity”. I think he was just trying not to witness anything else that would ultimately turn him so far against the female body’s functionality that he would have no choice but to start meat packing.
I trickled, and trickled and trickled some more. The nurse had to stop at one point and empty the cup. I then promptly filled up the second cup when she pulled out the stir stick and told me that that was “good enough.”
Good enough? My definition of good enough meant an empty bladder- but apparently she was taught otherwise when she was working towards her online nursing certificate. I decided to pick my battles however, and wasn’t particularly enjoying the experience anyways so I figured I would wait until I was wheeled into my recovery room and then ask my husband to help me into the bathroom.
I learned at that point that my butt may as well been nailed to the bed. I could not physically move it. The hospital could have burned down around me and I wouldn’t have been able to save myself. Finally the night nurse came back in and gave me a regular catheter with a hanging bag. She inserted it and immediately I filled the entire bag and could see my pee beginning to back up the tubing.
I used to work in a nursing home so catheters are no foreign object to me and I happen to know firsthand that when the bag is full, you need to empty it right away. So I asked the nurse, in case she hadn’t noticed. She told me that it was morning shifts job to do that and left the room. Thankfully, a different nurse emptied it later for me when she brought Nathan to me to nurse.
The next morning I awoke to an old woman and a girl who was very likely younger than me peering under my blanket at my very swollen butt. Good morning to me! The elderly nurse explained to me that there was something wrong with how my catheter had been inserted and fixed it for me saying that I would have it removed in a few hours.
Then I met the most annoying nurse known to mankind. She made my night nurse look like Florence Nightingale. This woman was a Type A personality at its finest example. She became my enemy and I wanted nothing more than to kick her in her uptight Harry Twatter
It all started when she came in ripping my blankets off, then snatched my son out of my arms telling me that I had to go take a bath. Seeing as how I was not 6 anymore, I thought bathing was left to my discretion but not when Nurse Twat was around. This was fine I decided because I wanted to be clean and dry my hair before visitors started flooding in with their cameras. I lowered my butt into the tub where I was directed to soak for 20 minutes. Without warning the douche came barging into my bathroom for no reason other than I think she enjoyed seeing people naked. She told me to make sure I washed my hair and then left. I quickly finished my shower, and even shaved my legs then hopped out to dry my hair and do my makeup.
When I made my way back to my bedroom I found my son with oxygen tubes in his nose. It turns out that his O2 sats were not where they should be and they were just giving him this extra boost. I was not happy with this news but I held him to my chest and remembered that he was perfect, even though his skin tone was slowly beginning to resemble that of an oompa loompa. My husband told me that the night before when they were suctioning out his lungs they had decided to treat that procedure the same way they treated my catheter and after suctioning for a few minutes decided it was “good enough” and that he would cough the rest up. However, he was not coughing the rest up and as the day progressed it became harder and harder for him to breathe. He was no longer nursing like he should be so Nurse Twat brought in a “finger feeder” and told me he was having too hard of a time breathing to be stressed with nursing anymore and that I would have to give him formula until my milk came in enough to pump.
Then I was brought my pump. Without closing the door my nurse sat down and told me to take my gown off and she was going to teach me how to use it. After I spent 15 minutes pumping and swatting her happy hands away from my boobs, she announced that I had inverted nipples and returned with nipple shields that were designed to be worn in my bra to draw out my nipples. This was news to me. I was certain I had normal nipples but didn’t want to say anything figuring that I was just mistaken in what I thought an inverted nipple was and planning to Google it as soon as I got home. I put them in my bra feeling like a pre-teen Madonna with my tiny little cones on my boobs.
This woman was a controlling freak. She would barge into my room every 5 minutes telling me my pillow was in the wrong place or that I was holding my baby wrong or that I should have started pumping 12 seconds ago and it was important I stay on a schedule. I started imagining what it would be like to kill her. I was at my last straw when she insisted that I start pumping 2 minutes before my doctor was scheduled to show up. I wanted to wait 10 minutes until after he had left but the Nazi nurse wouldn’t allow it. This left me with my nipples being sucked down a tube with my doctor watching. I was mortified. {Why? I do not know seeing as how there was a very good chance that I pooped on him just 12 hours earlier}.
After I finished pumping the half ounce of colostrum from my jugs I reinserted the nipple shields. My doctor looked at me puzzled and asked where I got them from. I filled him in and then he told me to throw them out and confirmed my hunch that my nipples were indeed normal.
Very shortly there was family scheduled to be showing up and I was having a dilemma. Not only was it getting harder and harder to lift my swollen butt off the bed with a ten pound ice pack strapped to my crotch, but I was beginning to swell from the knees down to the point that my legs looked like they were victim to radiation poisoning. And not just a little. It looked like they had survived a blast not even a cockroach could have endured. I was mortified! They were now toying with the idea of sending my son to a different hospital because his breathing was becoming more and more labored.
I was getting depressed because I wasn’t due to be discharged until the next day. They kept him one more night and the following afternoon and ambulance came to transport him to the Children’s Hospital NICU. I was devastated to say the least but was happy that I was getting out of the hospital and could go be with him. It was a miserable experience to watch my tiny little boy being loaded into the transport bed, one that I can find absolutely no humor in. They took him away and I went back to my room, loaded up my things and we all walked out of the hospital silently. I didn’t even get a wheelchair ride out!
I still could barely walk but finally managed to get to the truck and we went home. I opened my front door and walked in to find that my cradle was missing. This sent me over the edge. I started to wonder if I was a lunatic that thought I had a baby and really didn’t. After all, here I was back at home with no baby and no cradle. As it turns out my mother-in-law had taken it to made bed sheets for it and she had it with her in her van.
We decided to have dinner at the truck stop in town then David and I drove an hour away to see our son. There really is no humor in what happened the next week until he got out of the hospital. It was actually just a very sad series of events that involved tubes in his head and needles running into several spots on his tiny little body. He also became so jaundiced that he had to be kept under a Bili -blanket and we were not allowed to hold him more than a few minutes with every visit. I had to pump breastmilk every 2 hours for him since he was being fed through a feeding tube at first and also because I wasn’t with him for many hours out of the day. He had developed a lung infection and during an exam also detected a heart murmur and what they thought was a heart aneurysm. Fortunately it was just a valve that had not closed properly at birth and just appeared to be an aneurysm. He was eventually released to come home on what was one of the better days of my life.
Remember to stay tuned because there were plenty of things to laugh {and cry} about in our first few weeks as a family!
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