While I was pregnant, when we talked about when the baby would come, Dean would often ask how long we would stay in the hospital. I would say, "I think you stay two days." Neither one of us thought the hospital sounded like a fun place to stay, and we would wonder if we could get out in less time. Then REAL life happened.
Sometime soon after I had been wheeled into the delivery room, Dr. Footer told me after the birth I would be moved to the "High Risk Maternity Ward." This was because the magnesium, he said, "might make you a little out of it."
Once Amelia was born and had nursed a tiny bit, the nurses started asking if we wanted them to take her to the nursery so we could rest. Beforehand, I had thought I would never let them take my baby away from me right after she was born. But strapped to three IV tubes and a blood pressure cuff, totally exhausted, I was suggestible. Everyone seemed to think it would be best to let her go, and they promised to bring her back when she was ready to nurse again. In the meantime Dr. Footer decided he didn't want me moved and told them to leave me in the delivery room till the morning.
Thus began the very, very uncomfortable night in the delivery room. The bed I was on folded in the middle so you could sit up in it and have a baby, plus the end of the bed was detachable, so it had a lot of places to fall into. I am a bit of a princess and the pea sleeper as it is, and since I had just had a baby, I was all the more, shall we say, tender. Dean didn't have a great time on his narrow, vinyl couch. About 4am, they brought Amelia back to nurse. Someone came to help me. I don't think it went well, but I really don't remember. I do know that sitting up and trying to nurse her made my blood pressure reach an alarmingly high number. They left the baby with us for awhile. Dean held her the whole time, sitting up on his couch. Eventually they came and got her again. About 6am, Dr. Footer came back to check on me. It was suggested, by him or a nurse, that I should let her eat formula for a day so my blood pressure would stabilize. Someone said something like, "It's better to give her a little formula than to not be here for her later" or something similarly alarming.
Thus began Amelia's brief but intense addiction to Similac.
In the meantime, a nurse gave me a sponge bath while I mourned all the things I had thought were going to happen after my baby was born, like getting to hold her a lot right away, getting to walk around after the delivery, and getting to take a shower, that obviously were not. When they came to move me to the new room, they wheeled the whole bed down to the delivery room and had me slide onto it. There was no sitting up involved. That's when I really began to worry that something was very wrong with me. Apparently others, like my mom and Dean, were pretty worried too. I guess in the end all of it was pretty normal. No one had expected it, though. Preeclampsia is, ironically, one of the few scenarios I had not read much about, worried about in advance, and made some kind of action plan for.
So I spent the day after Amelia was born in high risk maternity in a magnesium haze. I didn't see her all day--or maybe they brought her to me once, but if they did I don't remember. The "mag," as they call it, blurred my vision and apparently made me somewhat incoherent (although I thought I was being pretty lucid, all things considered). It really must work in chilling you out, because I remember being only vaguely worried about my lonely formula baby in the nursery.
All this time, I was hooked up to an automatic blood pressure cuff that took a reading every 30 minutes. If the reading was too high, it beeped insistently until a nurse or someone came to turn it off. It beeped every single time. I couldn't reach the button to turn it off, so Dean was getting up every half an hour to turn it off, all day and night.
About 1:30 am of the next morning, I got to "get off the mag." At the same time, I took a blood pressure-lowering medicine that made my pulse go up a lot. Coming off the mag and taking the new medicine at the same time created a strange mental state in which I felt very awake but also very detached from where I was. When I closed my eyes I could see intricate colored patterns, sort of like water being rippled by hundreds of very tiny stones. I felt that I could write a beautiful, piercing account of Amelia's birth if I only had light, paper and the ability to sit up. Sadly, whatever I was composing disappeared with the end of the night and the rest of the mag.
The next day, I felt a lot better. My mom and Heather stayed with Dean and me while we waited for the baby to be brought to us for good. By the time they brought her, along with a lactation consultant for a nursing lesson, it looked like I would be going home the next day. So mom and Heather said good-bye, leaving me, Dean and Amelia to go home by ourselves the way we had professed we wanted to.
Chaos ensued. The lactation nurse was in the middle of shoving my nipple in Amelia's mouth when another nurse burst into the room and announced, "Dr. Nugent is ready to check the baby." I had no idea who Dr. Nugent was, and I was trying to learn to feed my child. I told the nurse this. She sighed and seemed put off but eventually checked with Dr. Nugent, who agreed to wait 15 minutes. In case you ever need to know, 15 minutes is not enough time to learn to breastfeed a newborn. Basically they took Amelia away hungry and unsatisfied. I was in tears. But we would try again later.
Which we did. The problem was I had no idea what I was doing. It's actually very hard to learn to hold a baby correctly for breastfeeding. The head has to be back and the neck can't be turned. The baby's body is supposed to be tight against the mother's. Then the baby has to latch on correctly. It's complicated and NOT all that instinctual.
So we had a rough evening. At the end of it (at which point they were finally moving me to the regular maternity ward, which they had been saying they were about to do all day) I was calling my mom in tears while Dean fed Amelia a bottle of Similac. At one point he put her down on the bed, and I looked at her and thought, "She's smaller than a breadbox, but everyone would miss her if she was gone. We have to keep her!"
Anyway, we eventually got in our new room. I undressed Amelia down to her diaper, took off my hospital gown, and we spent the whole night skin-to-skin. She finally latched on, the lying down position worked for both of us, and she had several 30-45 minute nursing sessions. It was a huge relief.
The next morning they brought us breakfast, and the nurse offered us The Washington Post. Dean took it, but we looked at each other in amazement at the reminder of the existence of the rest of the world.
We stayed for 2 more nights in the new room. I had a reaction to the first blood pressure medicine, which involved a fun hour of about 10 doctors and nurses running in and out and doing an EKG. It took awhile for Dr. Footer to be satisfied that he had found a good new medicine. The only up side to staying--and this is really a GOOD up side--was that the last day we were there, I had the best nurse ever, an excellent, wonderful, kind nurse named Sarah, who came in and out again and again to help me with nursing. She made me try to sit up and nurse, and that combined with Dean discovering and teaching me the "cross cradle hold" allowed Amelia to begin to turn into the champion nurser she is today. Also, the last night, Dr. Footer apparently ordered special breastfeeding help for me. I guess he wanted to make sure it was going well before he let me go home. So after the blessing of Sarah, we got to spend a lot of the night with Irene, who helped me fine tune our technique while she took my blood pressure and stroked Amelia's head, crooning, "Keep eating, baby." (Dean and I still say this to Amelia in Irene's singsong way. I don't think I'll ever forget the way she sounded.)
The last day we were in the hospital was stressful and drawn out. My blood pressure was higher than everyone wanted it to be, and it was questionable whether or not I would actually get out. This story has gone on long enough, though, so I'll cut to the end and say we FINALLY got to leave at about 6:00 pm. They wheeled me down to the exit, and I sat and waited to Dean to get the car. It was a beautiful fall evening. Between Amelia and me and the rest of the world were the two glass walls of the hospital entrance. Outside the leaves on the trees, bright yellow and the pale green of early autumn, were turning and shivering in the breeze.
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