Recovery

Though I've had two weeks to sift through my memories stores, there are some moments from the hospital which seem destined to evade me forever, thanks to the combo of drugs and the monumental shift of postpartum hormones.  Luckily I have Rhett here to ask, "So when so-and-so came in, what did s/he say again?" or "What happened when...fill in the blank, etc."  It's a frustrating sort of amnesia but then again, given the emergency nature of the birth, it's not at all surprising.

When I quasi-wake up after the c-section, Grace is by my side in recovery folding two gigantic bed pads into a makeshift diaper.  (Did I mention there will be blood?  Nothing prepares you for tomorrow when that diaper comes off and you look like Carrie at the prom.)  Grace tapes me up really well and says to let her know if she can get me anything.  I mumble something about ice chips and pass out again until there is a baby in a plastic bassinet on top of a pram next to me.  Oh, hey, it's a baby.  She's pretty cute.  Wait, that's our baby.  I know her!  Tempest.  And that's my husband.  Where did they go?  What time is it?   

"How was the nursery," I creak out.

Rhett proceeds to answer all of my questions, though the details are blurry to me now.  I ask to hold Tempest and Grace comes scuttling over to help out.  I am going to attempt to breastfeed for the first time right away and do some skin-to-skin.  There's no instruction manual.  You just go with your instinct but it's shocking how small and floppy our daughter is against my grand tetons.  I'm looking down at my swollen breasts - actually, I have to pause and laugh because immediately post-surgery the swelling is mostly IV fluid and nothing compared to the engorgement to follow on Friday.  ha! - and I see that one pillowy boob is twice the size of Tess' head.  How on earth is this little girl going to latch onto this thing?

But she does.  It may be a first attempt but by gosh, she does it.  She is fiercely hungry and determined and then...she falls asleep.

This is not uncommon, Grace reassures me.  Preterm babies have a harder time than most but for now we let her rest, in absolute awe over this small human still latched onto my breast.

I spend another 30 min or so in recovery fading in and out and babbling about who knows what.  At some point Grace announces that it's time to travel to Jefferson 37, my purgatorio room before moving into the general postpartum unit.  That night I will be visited by more ghosts than Scrooge on Christmas Eve, only two of which I will remember vividly: the nursery nazi and the disappearing nurselette with the flowered Crocs who helped me sop up my Prom Queen Carrie episode in the bathroom before generally remaining MIA.  My parents will stop by to meet their granddaughter sometime after midnight (more on that in the next post) and I will promptly begin what is to be a 72 hour cycle of not sleeping at all because I feel solely responsible for the well-being of my newborn daughter, despite the armada of hospital staff and willing family members.  I guess that's motherhood at its finest.