Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Ellis' Birth - Part 2

I was not prepared for how emotional I would be after the c-section. I wasn't prepared to feel so alone or isolated. I wasn't prepared to cry myself to sleep or to wake up in the middle of the night fearful that I would end up back at the hospital.

The postnatal ward had 24 moms and their babies in it. It was never quiet in there and yet I felt all alone. After they got me and Ellis situated in our curtained cubicle, they allowed Niel to visit me for 10 minutes or so before they asked him to leave. He would only be allowed to visit me from 5:30 to 7:30pm for the next few days. Two hours a day to see and hold his newborn son. Two hours to console his emotional wife.  Here is a picture from one of his visits.


After Niel left I laid in bed feeling very alone. I was in so much pain. I had asked for some pain medication post c-section in the recovery room and they gave me Tylenol. The pain got increasingly worse and I was really wanting something more than tylenol. There were two nurses at night to help with all 24 women and their babies. I could see that they were overworked. It also took me very little time to realize that one of them did not speak English. This was a problem as I don't speak Cantonese. She was trying to ask me questions but I could not understand her. She got louder and louder and she sounded like she was yelling at me. I felt helpless. I laid in bed for what seemed like hours and would cry out in pain, “someone please help me.” I remember moaning and silently praying and asking God to take my pain away. Several hours in the nurse that spoke English came and said that she was not permitted to give me anything stronger than tylenol unless the doctor approved it. The doctor had not gotten back to her and so she told me very firmly that there was nothing she could do and that I needed to deal with it. (In the morning the doctor did come in and she approved them giving me an Aleve once a day. It didn't really help at all.)

15 hours after the c-section, they took the catheter out. This meant that I had to walk down the hall to the shared bathroom. This was extremely painful. They did send several people to my bed to help me the first time I got out of bed. It was not a pretty sight and I was in so much pain. 

Eventually the pain did get easier to bear. I was recovering and I just wanted to go home, to finally be a family. I could not wait for the two hours Niel could visit each day. 

Ellis slept all the time. We could not wake him up. The nurse would bring him to me to nurse but neither of us could wake him to eat. Two different lactation specialists came to see us. Both were perplexed as they could see how hard it was to wake him. He seemed to do alright latching in the brief moments he was awake but he wouldn't stay awake long. I watched him get thinner and thinner. I asked the nurses about this and they said this is normal and not to worry. He started off small. He was only 6 pounds 1 ounce and birth and it seemed like he was wasting away to nothing before my eyes. The night before they were going to release me I asked the nurse if they would give me some formula. I could tell he was too thin. She said no. The morning they were going to release the same nurse came in and said that I was all cleared to go but Ellis was not. He had lost too much weight and the pediatrician would not clear him. They needed to monitor him for dehydration. They said I could stay with him and try to get him to gain weight in the next 24 hours. I was so upset. I was looking forward to going home, to finally being with my husband for more than 2 hours a day. I had already spent 4 nights at the hospital at this point. I had also been saying that I thought Ellis was too thin and no one one seemed to care up till this point. The pediatrician said I needed to cup feed Ellis an ounce of milk every 2 hours. She said that I had to pump (I was not allowed to do this either before this point for some reason) and supplement with formula on top of nursing him. He gained back 2% of his body weight in 24 hours and was released the next day.

I was so happy to be going home. Niel was so happy that we all could finally be together. I was told that I could not shower until they removed the stitches a week later. I could not wait. I felt so dirty and disgusting at this point. When I went to get the stitches removed, they saw that I had had an allergic reaction to the stitches. I did not have an infection but the wound had not closed. They had me go back every couple of days to look at it and redress the wound. I spent many night crying, fearful the wound would not close and become infected and that I would end up back in the hospital. I told Niel that I felt like I had two wounds that needed healing, the physical one and the one in my heart. 

The birth story did not end there. God did heal both wounds! I will share more in the next entry. 

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad you now have a beautiful son in Ellis. That will make you forget all the troubles having him.

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