Our baby boy was finally here, but the road to healing had just begun. I had lost a lot of blood during the c-section, 800 cc to be exact which is almost a liter, and I was very anemic with an iron level of 8.7 (normal range is 12-15.5). Besides being incredibly sore, I felt lightheaded, nauseated, and weak. My one and only job was to nurse Roman, and it required a copious amount of pillows and helping hands. I was relieved that he latched on right away, and was a great sucker, but I still had to feed him about every 2-3 hours around the clock so I wasn't getting the sleep I desperately needed.
Right after you give birth, whether it's vaginal or c-section, the nurses push hard on your uterus to make sure it "clamps down" and you don't hemorrhage. They were even more concerned than usual in my case because my uterus had been contracting for 48 hours, and I had been on Pitocin for 24 hours. A tired, overworked uterus can be slow to clamp down and I didn't have any blood to spare. The first time this one particular nurse pushed on my freshly cut open stomach I almost screamed. I gripped the side rails of my bed with tears in my eyes. Brad had crashed on the couch almost immediately after Roman was born, and I didn't want to wake him up. I couldn't believe how hard she was digging into me, right above my minutes-old incision. She was putting her whole body weight into her hands, and I thought for sure my stitches would rip open. Once again I thought the pain of contractions would finally be over, but those "massages" brought it all back. I cringed every time she walked in the room.
Ironic how after you have a baby everyone else gets to rest, except you. Brad was snoring on the couch, our family had left to go sleep for the first time in days, and I was lying helpless in my bed while the nurses took care of me. After going through this experience, I have a whole new appreciation for nurses. As a nurse myself, I never really experienced the other side of it. To have someone serve you and bathe you and help you in your most vulnerable state gave me a pure gratitude for these women. Within a few hours I had 2 nurses come in and give me a sponge bath. I really needed more of a car wash at this point, but they did what they could. It had been 3 days since I showered, I was bleeding and sweaty all over. I'm sure I'm smelled terrible, but the nurses worked quickly and respectfully as they rolled me like a log from side to side, wiping between all the intimate creases and crevices. I still had the catheter in my bladder, and the nurse informed me it would be removed at 8 am.
"What!? There's no way I can walk to the bathroom, can we leave it in longer? I'm not ready," I pleaded.
"Well it can only be in for 24 hours due to risk of infection, and it will be in 26 hours by then so we're already pushing it," the nurse apologized.
By morning the nurses had removed my catheter, and I needed to use the bathroom for the first time. Amazing how such a simple, thoughtless task we do daily can become an Olympic event. I never called the nurses to help me with that. I just wanted Brad, and he was stronger, anyway. He jumped to my side when I told him I needed to go, and we began the ritual that we would repeat many times over the next few days. The bathroom was only feet away, but it might as well have been at the top of Mt. Everest. We sat the back of the bed up as far as it could go, but it still wasn't enough to put me upright. You realize how much you use your core muscles when you don't have them anymore. I was wincing and whimpering as Brad physically lifted each leg off the side of the bed, and I gripped around his neck as he sat me up, feet dangling off the side.
"Wait, wait, wait, please," I whispered.
"It's ok, I gotcha. Take all the time you need," he reassured me. I grabbed a pillow to splint my incision, and after a few minutes Brad helped me put my feet on the floor for the first time in about 30 hours. It felt strange standing upright. My world had been horizontal for so long that now it felt like I was walking on the walls. Brad supported most of my weight, sometimes behind me, sometimes in front of me, as I slowly tried to put one foot in front of the other. We eventually made it to the bathroom, where Brad lowered me onto the porcelain throne and helped me in ways no human should ever have to. But he still loved me.
On and on we repeated that cycle. Nurse the baby, push on my stomach, crawl to the bathroom. At about 11 am the doctor who "broke" my water came to check on me. She listened to my lungs, checked my bleeding, then sat on the foot of my bed and asked, "And what are you going to do for birth control?" Brad and I looked at each other and almost burst out laughing. Birth control was the farthest thing from our minds.
By Thursday evening the nurses informed me that Roman's temperature was low, and they needed to put him in the warmer. They stripped him down to his diaper, and put him under the warmer right next to my bed. It was the first time I had really seen his whole body. I tried to reach him, but I couldn't quite touch him, and my stomach hurt too bad to bend any farther.
That first day was a blur for me. Nurses, family members, and doctors were in and out all day. They asked me if I wanted them to save me a Thanksgiving dinner from the hospital cafeteria. Sounded...appealing, I said sure. I still wasn't allowed to eat anything more than a few bites of jello, since my gut was still "sleepy" from the anesthetic. Every time the nurses would check on me they asked if I had passed gas yet. I had never seen Brad so excited about me farting before, and I told him his enthusiasm better last when we eventually go home. (It didn't, in case you're wondering.)
The first few days after you have a baby, and especially your first, you live within this surreal time warp full of pain, love, and getting to know this new creature. Brad held his son like he had been holding babies his whole life, he was a natural. I watched from my bed as he spoke to him about all the things he was going to teach him, about his big dreams for him. I have never seen my husband stare at something, or someone so deeply. He was studying every detail of that little face, and occasionally lifted his eyes to me as if to ask, "Am I doing ok?" You're doing great, I returned with a smile. He really was. I wasn't sure how he would react to our new baby. He was the youngest of two kids, with no nieces or nephews on his side, and had never really interacted with babies before. I'm not sure what I expected, maybe it would be overwhelming, stressful, weird. But he looked so...happy. Content. Relaxed. Like he wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world, but holding our son. I had dreamed of doing my own professional pictures at the hospital, but being so incapacitated, that wasn't going to happen. Still, I grabbed my camera from the side table, held it away from my body, and prayed I would get the shot. It ended up being my favorite picture from the entire birth, a father falling in love with his boy.
Nighttime rolled in, along with a blizzard on that Thanksgiving day. Roman was born into a whirlwind, literally and figuratively. Family went home again, and Roman went back to the nursery for the night. I always thought I would keep my baby right next to me 24/7, and I brushed off the advice of the veteran parents that would tell us, "Just send him to the nursery and sleep!" But it's true, we were exhausted and they still brought him in every few hours to eat, anyway. He was the only baby born on Thanksgiving, so we knew he was getting lots of snuggles by the nurses.
It was just Brad and I. For the first time since before I was pregnant, we were alone. Just the two of us again. We bonded over bathroom trips and water runs. I treasure those memories of Brad leaning over my bed to kiss me so gently, his hand resting on my head like I'm the most precious thing he's ever had. Not only were we falling love with Roman, we were falling in love with each other all over. It was a little less glamorous this time. We were unshaved, unshowered, and unashamed. It was raw and stripped of all the comfort of every day life. It was real.
By Friday morning, Brad had to work for a few hours on the 2 businesses we were in the process of opening (great timing), so my mom and sisters stayed with me and offered to help me get cleaned up. They say it takes a village to raise a child, it also took a village to get me showered. Normally I would never allow my family to see me buck-naked, but I let my guard down and accepted the help from the people who loved me most. I held a towel over my incision as my mom washed my hair, Kasey scrubbed my body and Amy held the baby. I could physically feel grace as my mom and sisters loved on me. They didn't have to, the nurses could do it, but they wanted to. I was taking care of my baby as my mom was taking care of hers. Oh, the cycle of life.
I put on a little deodorant and mascara, I felt human again! I picked at some leftover breakfast, someone had thrown away the Thanksgiving dinner they were saving for me. I enjoyed my family and my baby. He was so alert for a newborn, maybe it's because he was 2 weeks past my due date, but he just kept looking around at everyone in the room. The days in the hospital run together, broken up by nursing, bathroom breaks, and getting my pain meds. There was one night that Roman slept for 5 hours straight, so they didn't wake me up to give me my medications. I woke up feeling like I had been hit by a train. It's amazing how much the human body can endure. I went through 48 hours of labor and a major surgery with blood loss, all without eating or sleeping from Tuesday to Friday. I was running on pure adrenaline.
Friday night Brad and I were alone again. I wanted to brush my teeth, so Brad pulled a chair right up to the sink and helped me sit down. I caught my reflection in the mirror for the first time. Staring back at me was a shell of the person I'm used to seeing. My eyes were puffy and swollen from pushing, my face was pale and dull, my stomach was a deflated blob that once held a life. As I started brushing my teeth, Brad picked up my brush and slowly started to brush my hair. I don't think in the history of our relationship he's ever brushed my hair (without me asking.)
"Did I have a knot, or are you just loving on me?" I asked.
"I'm just loving on you," he said. "You're beautiful." He had seen me looking at myself. "I'm serious, you've never been more beautiful. I'll never look at you the same again." Shoot, I'll go through this a hundred times over, I had never felt so loved.
I had to say goodbye to my family sometime on Saturday. They had put their lives on hold for me, and it was time to get back to the real world. Sometime Saturday afternoon Brad's parents, sister and brother-in-law came to visit us. Roman was acting very fussy all day, and it wasn't like him to cry so much. I kept trying to nurse him every hour because he was acting hungry, but I had a suspicion he wasn't getting much because my milk still hadn't come in yet. The baby nurse on Saturday was another one of my good friends, Kammy.
"Hannah, do know what his temperature is?" She asked me.
"No, what?" I asked.
"101," she replied, "and he hasn't had a wet diaper all day." Oh no, my nurse mind started to turn to infection, IVs, a NICU stay. Brad's mom walked in with dinner right after Kammy told me, and I started to cry. I was physically and emotionally drained and I couldn't handle any more bad news. The nurses checked his blood for an infection, but they didn't find anything so we came to a conclusion that the fever was a result of dehydration. I nursed and I nursed, but he began fighting it since he wasn't getting anything and wouldn't latch on. I tried pumping, but I was bone dry. I really didn't want to give him formula, but my baby was sick and needed food. At first I tried to nurse him with a supplemental nursing system (SNS). It's a small catheter that supplies formula into babies' mouths while they continue to breastfeed. The catheter wasn't working at all, and he wouldn't latch anyway, so I finally consented to giving him a bottle.
I was heartbroken as I sat in my bed watching Brad give him formula. I had failed at a home birth, I had failed at a vaginal birth, and now I had failed at breastfeeding. After his first bottle, Roman went back to the happy, alert baby he once was. Brad handed him back to me, but his baby breath that had smelled so sweet, now smelled like sour formula and I didn't like it. I continued to pump, and every drop of colostrum was sucked up with a syringe and squirted in his mouth.
By Sunday Brad's family was gone and my mom came back to help me for a few days. I was feeling really sick and nauseated, and my lips were ghostly white. I couldn't sit up or eat at all. I was so overtired that I couldn't sleep, and I was delirious. Brad, my mom, and the nurses had to convince me to try an Ambien to help me get some sleep. I reluctantly took it, and dozed off to some of the strangest dreams I've ever had.
By Sunday evening it was time to go home. A nurse came in and gave us a bath demo. I was still very nauseated, exacerbated by the fact Brad had just eaten a ceasar salad, but I watched and tried to help as best I could. We strapped Roman into the car seat after the nurse took out all the fluff and padding I had been so excited about, and stepped on the same elevator that brought me here in labor. When we walked into our house, we were greeted by our sweet dog, Gracie, and one more surprise my sisters had left me. We were finally home.
I want to thank everyone who helped us through this process. Thank you to our amazing midwife, Pam, and her nurse Kari for taking such great and personal care of us throughout the pregnancy and labor. Thank you Bob and Sharon for running errands for us and taking care of Gracie. Thank you Mom and Kasey and Amy for staying with me and serving me hand and foot. Thank you to all the nurses at Mercy for respecting us, taking care of us, and encouraging us. There's so many people to thank, and so many things they did for us that we'll never know. Most importantly, thank you to my rock, my soulmate, Brad. Thank you for choosing me to be the mother to your children, thank you for going to all my appointments, even though they were an hour away. Thank for getting me through labor, and recovery. Thank you for clapping when I farted in the hospital, for wiping my butt, for helping Roman latch on every 2 hours in the night, for changing diapers, for giving me a safe and comfortable place to raise our family. I hope I make you proud as a wife, and now a mother. I love you the most.
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