We're Havin' a Baby... Part Three!

A fog clouded my eyes. I blinked and blinked to clear them, but to no avail. I felt the sticky tape of the IV pulling on my arm. I looked down at my hands. Each digit looked like a chubby breakfast sausage and not one of them would bend at will. I turned my head to see Jess standing beside me, holding little Graye in his arms. Behind him Zol sat in the chair he’d earlier passed out in, smiling when he saw I was finally awake.

“How do you feel?” I felt FAT. HUGE. It was as if the Michelin Man or Pillsbury Doughboy had fathered me in some previous life. All I could see where my hands, arms and feet and I knew just from looking at them that the rest of my body was 3 times the size it normally was. Later, a picture of my face taken at the time proved it much to my dismay. Jess handed me the baby, and she nursed quietly.

The day carried on, with nurses coming in and out. My blood pressure was checked no less than 15 times over the course of the day. Zol and Jess left at some point to go clean up what Jess later called ‘a scene from an episode of the Sopranos’’ back at the house. I don’t remember much of what was said to me that day aside from the fact that I had a catheter and there would be no need to get up and pee (thank God!). My eyes remained blurry and I was lightheaded with any sudden I movement made.

For some strange reason, during my whole three-day long stay at the hospital, whenever food was brought in they placed it SO completely far out of reach I had to annoyingly buzz a nurse to come put it in front of me. By the time they got around to moving it within my grasp, much of it was cold and soggy.

That evening I was moved into another room, one with a window and thankfully a TV!! Zol came back after the clean up and we watched crappy shows and ogled our new daughter. He left later in the evening and I settled into what I thought would be the first ‘night of hell’ I’d heard so much about. Turns out this wasn’t the case as Graye would softly grunt and quietly squawk if she was hungry. Not the case with every other woman with child on that ward. They let ‘er rip ALL NIGHT LONG. I longed for my own house and bed as the woman next door to my room called her family in Russia at 4am two nights in a row. As to not wake her baby with her chatter she leaned against my doorway as she babbled away in Russian...

My teeth had the equivalent of a 70’s shag carpet on them by the next morning and I decided it was time to give them a good brushing. Moving and shifting around on the bed had been hard enough, but getting up? Yah, just a TAD more uncomfortable. Due to the whole giving birth thing and then the surgery, getting off the bed proved a bit more challenging than I had thought it would be, and getting back INTO the bed was even worse! Imagine me perched in saddle upon a horse – take the horse away… that was me trying to walk.

Later in the day my midwife Beth showed up and asked me if I had remembered anything she’d told me the day before. I had no recollection of even seeing her, so she retold me the news… the placenta had been removed successfully and without any damage done to my uterus. There was no known reason as to why it had not released. Retained placentas weren’t that common and nobody really knows why it happens. She told me to keep taking my stool softeners (that did NOTHING) and Tylenol and that she’d be back the next day to hopefully get me checked out of the hospital.

Thursday morning came and six hours of waiting finally had us released from the maternity ward. A million papers to go over… getting the baby into her car seat… yada yada the hospital drill… finally we walked out the door into an amazingly beautiful day. The sun was bright and hot and so was our van that had been parked in it for six steady hours. The seven speed bumps we went over to exit the parking lot reminded me that my body was still not yet my own. It felt like I had been kicked in the box to an extent I’d never imagined possible, but looking down at our wee little one, so small she needed to be wedged into her seat with rolled up diapers and blankets – I almost felt no pain.

We were going home – as a real FAMILY. Zol and myself were now connected for a lifetime whatever the winds may bring us… and that felt…. wonderful.