The first night and day after delivering a baby is a blur. A happy, emotional, frustrating blur. Breastfeeding is a strange and unnatural feeling, no matter what your expectations were beforehand. Nothing will prepare you for the amount of blood loss, although mine would have been considered hemorrhaging if I hadn't had a dual placenta. I guess I should explain that a little more (Roma, this one's for you). When my placenta was delivered, there were actually two of them attached to one amniotic sac, with the umbilical cord running down the centre of the sac and not actually attached to either placenta. Contrary to popular belief, this does not mean that I was carrying twins at any point. To my gross excitement, it was even more rare! My obstetrician delivered the monstrosity and exclaimed "Cool! Dual placenta!! Check it out!" and proceeded to bring it over for me to examine (hooray for a doctor knowing you that well). If I had only grown one placenta with the placement of the cord the same, Sprout would have been a low birthweight baby. The nutrients would have had to diffuse across the membrane over to the cord instead of running directly into it, had it been attached. Luckily for her, two placentas grew separately on either side of the cord, allowing twice the nutrients to march across and dive into my little pork chop. My placenta was the star of the hospital for 24 hours, put on display for all nurses, students, and doctors to fawn over. I was extremely proud. Me, the biology nerd, producing some medical spectacle for everyone to learn from! So there was the breastfeeding thing, the bleeding thing, the lack of sleeping thing...what else...oh, right. The puffy thing. I was so swollen the day I went in to be induced, I literally didn't recognize myself. The pictures of the day I delivered her look nothing like "me". I could leave entire hand prints in my lower legs, especially around my ankles and feet. Uggggggghhhhh, my feet! They were horrible. They fell asleep all the time because of all the extra pressure from the fluid, and my toes looked like they were about to get swallowed by the dome precariously wobbling above them. You think that they're going to go down the day after you deliver. Everyone says the swelling doesn't last, and that you pee out all the extra fluid you've been hauling around. Well, in my case, it seemed to all run down my legs and pool even more into my feet. Think you've seen a set of cankles before? Not until you've seen photos of my postpartum nightmare.
We got discharged and went home by 10:30 a.m. the day after I delivered Sprout (not even a full 24 hours...they tried to kick me out at 9 a.m.). We got her dressed (and took a bazillion pictures of her first outfit) and my husband chuckled constantly as I fumbled and swore at my "going home" outfit that I had bought for myself. Apparently my approximation of how much smaller I would get the day after popping her out was a bit of an overestimate. On the way to the hospital, I wore a set of sand-coloured UGG cardi boots - the cute ones that fold down with the big brown buttons on the sides - and figured they'd fit even better after I got rid of all that swelling the day after delivery. WRONG. Dear husband laughed even harder as he had to come over and hold my boots while I tried to jam my already-size-nine-before-swelling clompers into them. I just about gave up, and was pretty close to tears when they finally went on. Poor feet. When we got home, and I took the boots off, I had imprints from each row of knit wool neatly pressed into the tops and side of each foot for over four hours. All in all, the swelling lasted about two weeks, and continued to go down until I could finally fit in my "cute" shoes when Sprout hit the 6 week mark. Nobody told me it would last that long.
So day two hits, and it's awesome. I'm totally loving being a mommy. Sprout is eating like a champ (although the pain I'm feeling will prove to be an issue...more on breastfeeding to come), and I've never been more excited to see something pee and poop as much as she did in the first few days! She loves her bath, likes to snuggle, is warm and smells good, and barely cries! Actually, she still didn't cry much until she hit the 6-8 week mark, and even then it was more of a temper issue. Still is. Back to day two, though. The health nurse comes out to the house and does the heel stick metabolic screen test, and is an absolute moron. She tells me to hold Sprout tightly against my chest - not her favourite position - and not to let her wiggle too much while she squeezes the blood out of her teeny little heel. That goes over like a lead balloon. Sprout starts howling harder than we've ever heard her, and the idiot nurse lances her heel so deeply that there are issues stopping the blood flow afterwards. And apparently the educated one can't even construct a band-aid for Sprout's heel. We were not impressed.
**Side note: Sprout did have a bit of jaundice, nothing major, and had to have another blood test two days later. The nurse who came out for that one suggested a miracle option: breastfeed while doing the blood test. Case in point, test was done, Sprout didn't make a sound. Awesome nurse = 1; Moron nurse = 0.
Day Three. Hell day. Or night. I don't even remember quite when it started going downhill. I was a little more than sleep deprived by the third night, and Sprout had started her breastfeeding issues (separate blog on breastfeeding to come). I think it was around 7 or 8 p.m. that things began to fall apart in a BIG way. Did you know that you can laugh and cry back and forth for almost ten hours straight? Welcome to hormoneville. My poor husband. As if the labour and delivery experience wasn't stressful enough, we had just spent the past two days absolutely in love with each other and marvelling at how easy this whole parent thing is, and now he was standing in the doorway of the ensuite gaping at me as I bawled on the phone at 3 a.m. to a nurse on Health Link. "I - sob - don't - sob - know - sob - what - sob - I'm - sob....DOING! Sob sob sob sob..." Not the first time (or the last) that they've gotten that phone call before. Making me feel so much better about my situation, the nurse said "It's day three, honey, everyone crashes on day three. It's inevitable, you can't run on adrenaline forever." Sigh. Thank you, nurse. Another non-idiot to add to the tally. We made it through the night, obviously, and although there were more issues later on with the breastfeeding thing, we were back on track the next morning.
Looking back, I wish I could have held onto those first days. All of it, the emotions, the memories, the first bath, diaper change, the little outfits, hats, blankets; setting up the bassinette, the monitor, the swing, the change station. Everything changes so quickly. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't trade the 4-month-old smiles, giggles, and eyebrow raises for anything right now, but they do grow fast, and I think every mother wants to hold onto their child being a baby for as long as they can. I think my next blog will be about breastfeeding. Hold onto your hats, people, it's going to be a wild ride. For now, cuddle your baby if you've got one. If not, cuddle your spouse. If no spouse, find a pet or a blanket to cuddle. Everyone needs some love, and everybody needs to be held. It's in our human nature. Coming to cuddle you now, Sprout.
xoxoxo Mommy
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