Next Day

We woke up the next morning to my OB checking my stitches and bleeding. She removed all of the gauze packing and it looked like the bleeding had stopped. Hooray! She had requested to keep me in L&D just in case, so once she checked me out we were cleared to move to postpartum recovery. The whole day Friday was spent moving us into our new room and getting settled. Luckily, no one tried to visit us on Friday, because we were dazed and confused and still in a little shock.

Once we got into the new room, it felt like things settled. My BP was still too low, and hemoglobin level kept dropping. (13 when we arrived, 11 after labor, 9 that night, and it hung around 9 the whole time in the hospital).

Since the way things work at our local hospitals is you get 2 days after a vaginal birth, we were planning to be discharged Saturday. Which seemed insane, as we only had one night in this new room. But that is the way it works. To be honest, this period of time is both a complete blur and also acutely clear in my mind. I remember flashes of things and nothing. I did know one thing - I was happy to have nurses around. They took care of the baby so well. She LOVED her nurse Brittany. And they took care of me physically and emotionally. The nurses were ... angels. I know that seems extreme, but they made the whole experience so wonderful.

Also, hospital food? Amazing.

So, we did what most new parents probably do - try to get used to this tiny human being there 24/7. We also tried nursing.

I will tell you (now that I'm 3 weeks out) that I wish I had done more research about nursing before going into this. I had hoped/expected my body to just happily feed the baby.  It's not always that easy, though. Especially when you have small, misshapen breasts.

After my doctor did rounds on Saturday, they decided to keep me another night for monitoring. Since I was the patient now, not the baby, the baby was discharged! So Saturday night, baby girl and my husband were my "guests" and stayed in my room.

That was a trip. It really hit us what was happening that night. I am very grateful our first "alone" night with the baby was in the hospital. I was a mess, so it was nice having some extra support!

Sunday morning my left leg was extremely swollen, so they did a scan due to my family's history with Deep Vein Thrombosis. Everything was cleared, and we were told we could go. We packed up and were discharged.

It was so surreal packing up and putting baby girl in her carseat. I was awkward and fumbled with it while my husband pulled the car around. The nurse tried to help as best she could (they aren't allowed to help really). Her name was Courtney, and she was so wonderful to us. Her calm, soothing demeanor kept both of us pretty sane.

Thank God for nurses...

Before long, we were in the Ford Focus and on our way home with our newborn.

Life as we knew it was over, and a new chapter had begun.

-Em