Complications

Had I just had a c section, I think the effects would have worn off and I'd have been a much happier Hollyberry.  Unfortunately, the second night after Oliberrykin was "born," I woke up absolutely freezing.  I was shivering like mad, which caused significant pain to my broken muscles and incision.  I couldn't get warm.  When the nurse checked me, I had a fever of 101.  Once the shivers went away, I got freakishly hot and sweated through everything.  When she checked me again, it was 102.  I was put back on an iv of fluids and two kinds of antibiotics, and my stay was extended by two days.  I spent the next two days falling between shivers and sweats.  The time I should have been taking to walk the halls and work out the stiffness and kinks and promote healing, I instead spent trying not to cry as I huddled in my very uncomfy hospital bed.  Because I have medical anxiety/panic attacks, the fever and lack of doctor-patient communication made me totally freaked out about dying or at least never going home or never getting well.  I needed to keep a temp of less than 100.4 for twenty-four hours, and I couldn't do it.  They forbade me visitors so I could sleep.  I kept sending the baby back to the nursery so I didn't have to worry about him, and then felt guilty about it, significantly hindering our bonding ability.  Basically, I spent that weekend in an overly emotional state of barely keeping it together.  I hated the Jeremelon, just a little, for being a man and not having to deal with any of it, and also for not really understanding it.  And for being able to cuddle the baby and spend time with him and bond when I couldn't.

Anyway, they determined I had an infection in either my uterus or my bladder, but most likely my uterus.  They put a quick catheter in to collect some urine...or rather, it should have been quick.  It took two nurses four tries - FOUR! - to get it in.  Not pleasant.  Although by that time I was so sore from my 12-hour medicine wearing off to be replaced by ibuprofen that I would happily have left it in so I wouldn't have to hoist myself up to go to the bathroom every 45 minutes (because again, gobs of fluids from iv).  That made it all worse, the inability to use my stomach muscles.  By the second day, my arms were so exhausted and overused from doing most of my stomach's work that I could barely use them.  I certainly couldn't heft myself into a sitting position with them alone anymore.  Getting into and out of bed became massively painful as I got more feeling in my abdomen.  So I was sore, exhausted, overwrought, jealous, guilty, and just wanting to go home.  I wan spasming ted to eat, but every time I did so my stomach spasmed.  Eventually they determined it was stomach acid and gave me Nexium, but it took a day and a half of not being able to eat without a stomach ache.  I didn't hurt much if I didn't move, which seemed to baffle the nurses.  They kept trying to get me to take my Percocet, which I continually declined.  I took one at the beginning and it didn't do much.  Then I took two together when the operation medicine started wearing off, and I had my usual "what did you just put in me?!?!" response of heart palpitations, dizziness, and an inability to calm my system down.  After that I didn't really see a point.  Instead, I had a couple Tylenol to keep the fever from spiking...and then worried that the Tylenol was what was keeping my temp down (because, well, it was!  Every time I didn't take it, my temp spiked) and I was going to go home and keep getting a fever (which, incidentally, I did).

Dealing with all of that meant I couldn't take care of my baby, which made me feel like a failure before I had a chance to try.  When they started my antibiotic iv, I was so swollen from all the earlier fluids the nurses in maternity couldn't find any veins.  So they called in the flight team.  Yep.  I had an iv put in by the guys who man Flight For Life.  Embarrassing.  Then, when it looked like I was getting better the nurses wanted to cap it so I could do things like take a shower (which I hadn't been able to do in three days), but the specific piece the guys had used didn't come equipped with capping capabilities, so no luck for me.  They had to keep pumping me with fluids because they couldn't just let the line sit there dry.  So I kept having to go to the bathroom constantly and take my pole with me (which, while standing up, I wasn't quite strong enough to pull over the lip between bathroom and room floor by myself, and especially not if I was having to hold open the door for myself).  While trying to nurse the baby (a soul-deep frustrating thing as it was), he used his super-powered legs to kick the iv, causing it to bleed outside the vein.  So they had to give me ANOTHER one to finish up the antibiotics.  This one they put in my wrist, so for the last day I was in the hospital, I couldn't do ANYTHING for myself.  I was finally feeling stronger and doing more, and suddenly I couldn't even feed myself (because, don'tcha know, it had to go in my right wrist, and I'm right-handed).  My discharge from the hospital happened over the course of three days with at least three different nurses, so that by the time I was supposed to be discharged, paperwork was wrong, I was confused, and nobody had bothered to ask us if we had any questions about taking care of the baby.  In fact, nobody bothered to ask us if we knew the slightest bit of what we were doing with the baby EVER.  Because I had a different nurse every 12-hour shift, I guess they all assumed someone else had asked.  At least most of them were nice.

Oh, and we found out as we were leaving that we had a weird room.  The door was extra heavy compared to all the others, and unlike the rest of the rooms it couldn't be left open.  My shower also had a curtain, which apparently no one else's did.  I also kept finding out things that they should have told me originally, like that my incision area could be numb for up to a year.  That the dressings over my staples needed to be washed off, and therefore I needed to take a shower.  That I needed to walk in order to get better faster (would have been nice to know in the beginning, so that I would then not have needed an incentive spirometer to keep my lungs open and not contracting pneumonia from being in bed so long).  I also had massive trapped-air pain throughout my abdomen and back, and the nurse didn't offer any useful info at all.  Instead, I found out the next day that she'd put in an order for a hot pad but the whole hospital was out.  Nice.

So yeah.  I would much have preferred a natural, normal birth to a c section.  I now have all kinds of hospital-related depression and anxiety to deal with on top of being a new mommy.  Ugh.