Hospital Stay

Hospital Stay

Due to having a C-section, I got to stay in the hospital from Tuesday until Friday. Honestly, it was mostly a good experience. 

Hospital food has a reputation for being God awful, but we learned this wasn’t the case when my husband ended up staying in a different hospital for a week 2 1/2 years ago when he found himself coughing up blood for no known reason. The food in that hospital was actually amazing, and they gave you so much that half the time we would split his meals between us. 

Food was pretty much the first thing on my mind when I was rolled into my hospital room. You know, after they made me do the hilarious fish flop from the operating bed into my normal hospital bed. That’s a ton of fun when you still can’t feel your legs. Although it was probably more successful than when I had to get on the operating table just after the spinal block.

I was told I could order dinner but warned not to eat too fast so I wouldn’t get nauseous. Yeah, that wasn’t an issue. I had no problems eating the entire time I was in the hospital. Other than the weird times they wanted you to order by. Lunch had to be ordered by 11ish, dinner by 5ish. They also called me around 4 or 4:30 to have me order breakfast for the next day. But the food itself was good, and there was a decent amount of choice. 

Also, I was across the hall from the “pantry,” where they had some cookies, crackers, milk, and soda, so snacks were always on hand. 

One of the things I hadn’t been sure about was whether or not I would send Lily to the nursery to sleep. There are so many different views on this, and at least one of the local hospitals has actually stopped allowing it. I didn’t think I would want to be away from her for a second, but the nurses all urged me to send her since I was recovering from surgery. Jon went home every night anyway since we only live five minutes from the hospital, no exaggeration. He was never going to get a good night’s sleep in a hospital recliner anyway.

So I did send Lily to the nursery. Due to a feeding schedule, she was brought to me every three hours anyway. I was grateful in the end to have a few hours where I could sleep uninterrupted. I slept deeply, better than I would have at home. Just shows that I really did need it after surgery.

One of the great things about having a C-section is I never pushed, so I didn’t have any labor pain. I don’t even think I got past stage one of labor. I could take that all day. The downside is that obviously, it’s a very major procedure. I think because it’s so common place and has such an exciting result, you forget how much recovery time you’re going to need. There’s also the false sense of security that comes with nearly painless labor and the pain killers you’re flooded with for hours afterwards. 

Once that shit wears off, though - ouch. Sitting up, let alone getting out of bed and walking anywhere, is nearly impossible for at least the first 24 hours. Everyone encourages you to get up and move more, but it’s hard to when your core doesn’t want to support you. At first I needed help just to get to the bathroom, about 10 paces away from the bed. It was an awkward shuffle with the assistance of two nurses. I was glad when I got the OK to try it on my own, and it is true that the more you do it the easier it becomes. By the second day, I wasn’t having much trouble getting around on my own, albeit slowly. And with a lot of pausing to say ouch. OK, there was a lot of trouble getting around on my own, but I suffered through it.

The first pain killer I was given was something in my IV. It wasn’t comfortable; it felt like someone put a bag of bricks on my body, but the pain at the incision site disappeared. Unfortunately, there was only so long before they took my IV out, so I only had that one once. After that, I was given three Motrin every six hours if I asked for it. I was also allowed to take Percocet, which I took when I had my wisdom teeth out. That was about 15 years ago, and at the time, it made me extremely nauseous. Sure, I was limited on food because of the teeth situation, but I could eat even less with the Percocet and became extremely weak. At some point, I switched over to Excedrin, and that was absolutely fine. So I was hesitant to take Percocet this time, but Motrin wasn’t doing it for the pain. The nurses gently encouraged me to give in to the other medication, and I eventually did. Thankfully, the way I handle it in 15 years has changed greatly, and it did end up being a big help. I only got dizzy from it occasionally, and that was usually rectified with some time and food.

The situation with the nurses was interesting. All of them were extremely nice, and you could say they were helpful, though some of their help got confusing. Just like with anyone who’s had a child, every nurse had their own opinion about every detail of having a newborn. Look, I am a huge proponent of knowing that each child is different and takes a different form of raising. I didn’t mind getting varying advice on my newborn daughter. What was annoying was that each nurse only presented one bit of advice, and it was presented as if it was the only way to interact with my baby. If one or two nurses had come in and given me a host of different options and said try them all to figure out what works for you, that would’ve made sense. Instead what I got was a bunch of women nicely telling me what to do as if it were the only way. That resulted in some of the nurses appearing to get upset with us, then realizing they were only upset with advice given by other nurses, then tampering their temper, though I could still see it on the back burner. I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble because I really felt like most people were doing their best.

The best example of this was on Thursday. The daytime nurse was different than on Tuesday and Wednesday. She came to meet me at shift change, around seven in the morning. I was shocked to find how I had been sleeping since around two. Why has no one brought my baby for her 5 o’clock feeding? The nurse said she had just checked on all the babies, and they were all calm and sleeping. She didn’t think she should wake them. She also noted that she is not normally in labor and delivery but in orthopedics. I appreciated her honesty; she said if I had questions about certain things, she might need to check with someone else. But that didn’t bother me. She told me she was going to let me get some more rest, and I had been sleeping well, so I appreciated it. 

I also realized I hadn’t taken any pain medication in about 12 hours at that point. I asked the nurse for some, and she said she would bring it soon.

About five minutes after she left, student nurses came in to take my vitals. I stayed laying down, but obviously I couldn’t sleep through that. Their professor came in and told one of them he was doing it wrong – I could’ve told him that. He was attempting to take my pulse on the same arm on which he was taking my blood pressure. He made the same mistake later in the day, too. 

Another five minutes after they left, my OB came in. That was when he told me he was glad I was getting rest. Ha ha – I guess that’s what it looked like as I was still laying down with the lights off. He didn’t want to examine anything since I was “sleeping.” Just wanted to let me know I would be discharged the next day.

The nurse came back in shortly afterwards with the pain pills. Who was I kidding at that point? Sleep was not going to happen. I had to go to the bathroom, and I tried to get up, luckily while the nurse was still there. I had gotten used to being able to shuffle there by myself, but since I hadn’t taken anything, I could barely stand up. Actually, I couldn’t stand up on my own at all. Another nurse had to come, and the two women had to try to help me to the bathroom. I couldn’t even make it, I got so dizzy. There was a recliner between my bed and the bathroom, and I ended up plopping down there. Again, I asked about my baby, but suddenly, my breakfast was delivered. We thought it best that I eat since the pain meds were making me dizzy. 

While eating, I was told several times about a discharge class that was happening that morning. I was highly encouraged to go to learn how to do things like bathe the baby. By the time I finished eating and finally got to the bathroom, I had to rush to make it to the class on time. Meanwhile, it was around 10, and I still hadn’t seen Lily! I asked for her to be brought to the class, as I had been told babies were allowed. They finally brought her to me in her little plastic crib, but I wasn’t about to feed her in the middle of all that.

The class went over some basics of going home, mostly calling doctors if the baby has a fever and things like that. By the time they got to the bath demonstration, all the newborns in the room were getting squirrley. There were nurses in and out to check on the babies and the moms, so a lot got missed along the way.

Later, an older nurse came in to check on us. She looked at the chart we’d been keeping on how frequently Lily had been eating and was pretty upset with the 7 1/2 an hour food gap from that morning. It was clear she was trying not to yell at us, so when I told her I had asked for my baby multiple times and not gotten her, she was much more upset at the idea of that. She said she would have a word with all of the nurses because this was unacceptable.

I felt pretty bad. I didn’t want the nurse on duty to get in trouble. Lily had been just fine, I had gotten some extra rest, and what exactly are you expecting when you put someone who’s not usually in labor and delivery in labor and delivery?! 

I’m not mad at hospital. I do think they could have used slightly better communication skills amongst the nurses, but I am in observer. Most people probably wouldn’t even make note of something like that.

I was amazed at how little I actually did while in the hospital. I am not a person to sit around and do nothing. Doing nothing to me is reading a book or writing in my journal, probably while simultaneously watching TV. I did absolutely none of that despite coming in with bags full of stuff. There was some TV watching, but even that was minimal. Mostly it was Lily watching. When I was pregnant, I used to watch the waves in my stomach, mesmerized by the movements. I wondered if I could possibly be as mesmerized by Lily on the outside. What a silly thing to worry about. Watching her tiny fingers wave around and limbs flail is beyond fascinating.

One of the best, if not sneakiest, things that happened in the hospital was a professional photographer came in to take pictures. Of course, you don’t have to buy the pictures but seriously, they’re hard to resist! They came out amazingly well, especially considering how tired we were and the fact that I wasn’t wearing any make up. If you know me, you know how unlike me that is! So now we have some gorgeous pictures of Lily from within her first 24 hours of life.

We had a few visitors while we were there. My parents came every day. My uncle came twice, an old friends popped by, and so did one of my coworkers. We want to introduce Lily to as many people as we can while she’s young and get her comfortable being held by people who aren’t us. That seems to be going well so far.

When the day to leave the hospital came, we weren’t rushed out. We were given as much time as we needed, which I appreciated. When we were ready to go, a wheelchair was brought for me. Jon carried Lily out in her car seat while I was wheeled into the elevator. We couldn’t believe it was finally time to go home.

So many new parents say they have this feeling when leaving the hospital of overwhelming responsibility. They can’t believe they’re being trusted to take care of this new life. After the years we’ve waited for Lily, that wasn’t how we felt at all. For us, we felt more like we couldn’t believe we were getting to keep to take her to our new house that we bought to be her home.