The Recovery Room

So a lot of the delivery day continues to be a blur for me...  I don't think I realized just how blurry things had gotten until I've been sitting down and writing these entries, trying to recall.  I've come to the realization that while I have very good recollection of particular details, a good amount has actually either left me, been repressed, or just never registered in the first place!  I keep asking Jason for particular details of that day.  Luckily he's been pretty patient with me in this regard.

To continue our story...    :)

Jenson and I were wheeled into the recovery room on our gurney.  They must use that room at times for overflow patients because I distinctly remember seeing another pregnant woman in there, surrounded by family and hooked up to monitors but still in her street clothes.  Until the nurses closed my curtains, she kept looking at the little peanut in my arms and smiling.  I'm hoping that she was soon able to hold her own healthy little babe...

Whenever I talked with women about their Caesarean sections, more often than not they would mention how cold it was in the operating and recovery rooms and how uncomfortable that made them.  Well, I loved it!!  After having what I can only describe as massive hot flashes for months (thanks to the healthy overdose of hormones coursing through my body and the three little furnaces hanging out in my tummy) the cooler temps in the OR and the recovery room were an absolute blessing.  The irony in all of this is that I moved away from Minnesota to get away from cold temps... and yet that was really something that I'd been craving throughout most of the pregnancy!

Once we were in the blessedly cool recovery room, the nurses went to town on me.  Checking my vital signs, checking for bleeding, etc.  And they went to town on Jenson too.  Checking his vital signs, checking his blood sugar, giving him the usual medications that all newborns get (antibiotic ointment for his eyes and a Vitamin K injection).  And they did this all while he was in my arms!

But what I am so excited about is that he and I were actually able to go "skin to skin" less than an hour after his delivery.  And thanks to my friend Pat and the nurses, we were able to put Jenson to the breast as well.  There is a lot of research that talks about how beneficial these things are for the baby (and for Momma too!), and I was so glad that I was able to do this with at least one of our babies.  Because I had basically thought that I wouldn't get to do this with ANY of the babies (thinking of how likely it would be that they'd all be going to the NICU) leading up to the delivery, getting to do it with Jenson was such a gift.  I kept looking down at this magical little creature on my chest and it seemed so strange that someone would actually entrust me with him!  Really?!?  I get to keep this little guy?!?  He's ours?!?  Babies are absolute magic.  Absolute magic.

The nurses kept checking on my pain level, and I don't really remember having any pain at that point.  When we first got into the room, I still couldn't feel my legs, but the feeling started to come back pretty quickly.  Pain wasn't really an issue at that point for me, but the shaking was.

Aahhhh.... the shaking.  I almost felt like I was having convulsions.  I couldn't get my arms and shoulders to stop shaking, which is a common thing to happen after delivery.  It's caused by the hormonal and fluid shifts that occur after delivering the baby (or babies!), and as you can imagine, I'm sure my hormonal and fluid shifts at that point were pretty significant as I'd just had three big placentas taken out.  The nurse was on it, and I got some great medication to help bring the shaking down to a dull roar (God bless Demerol).  I wasn't cold at all, so I don't think it was actually shivering.

The shaking probably wouldn't have bothered me so much except for the fact that I was holding Jenson.  I remember asking people if I was going to give him "shaken baby syndrome" before he was even an hour old because of my shaking arms!  They continued to reassure me that he was fine and that I wasn't hurting him.  And so the worrying that I had during the pregnancy about how I might be damaging my children?  Destined to continue after delivery...

And then they finally let me have some ice chips.  I don't think anything has ever tasted so amazingly wonderful and delicious as those first spoonfuls of ice chips!  At that point, it'd been almost 16 hours since I'd gotten to eat or drink anything.  Because of the shaking, Pat took over the task of rationing ice chips into my mouth.  I probably would have launched ice chips across the room if I'd tried to handle the spoon on my own for too long.  Plus my hands were a little full with a certain adorable baby!

Jason and I were so lucky to have Jen, Janelle, and Pat at the hospital with us that day- someone had to keep our respective families up to date with news!  I have no clue how they managed to do it because it seemed like they were always surrounding us (which was exactly what Jason and I needed!), but they were sending text messages, making phone calls to each of our families, and sending pictures too.  Amazing! They even made phone calls to our coworkers so that they knew that everything was okay with us as well.  In the months leading up to the delivery, I'd put a family phone tree down on paper and had arranged for certain family members to be ready to disseminate information on down the line.  Since I knew that Jason and I would probably be a little too preoccupied on the delivery day to make all of the phone calls that would need to be made, my close friends got copies of the phone tree too.  We were so blessed that our friends not only used the phone tree that day, but they also hadn't laughed too much at my ridiculousness when I'd previously emailed it out to them!  Once again, I have been blessed with some pretty amazing people in my life...

Everyone (Jason, Jen, Janelle, and Pat) continued to keep me up to date with what was going on with Elliott and Sidney in the NICU.  It may sound odd, but I was not worried about them- I knew in my heart that they were going to be okay.  I also felt that they were truly in good hands with the nurses and staff in the NICU.  The Sutter Memorial Hospital may be an older facility (they're actually in the process of building a brand new hospital that they'll be moving to!), but their NICU staff has one of the best reputations around.  And I guess that I'd encountered so many other high caliber staff throughout my time with the Sutter health system that I just trusted that the NICU staff was going to follow suit.

Perhaps I was slightly delusional at this point (need I remind you that I had just given birth to three munchkins!), but I was actually more concerned about Jenson than I was about Elliott and Sidney.  Whoever the heck determined that it was okay to let me keep him was obviously as delusional as I was!

To look down and see this gorgeous creature in my arms who had only taken his first breath in this world less than an hour previous... you just can't look at that and not believe in a higher power.  To know that Jason and I had created three of those gorgeous creatures... you can't help but see the hand of God in it.  To feel such love for someone that I had only just met... it takes my breath away just thinking about it.

I wish I had the words to do justice to how I felt at that moment, to help describe exactly what it feels like to have three new little munchkins alive and breathing their first breaths in this world... for once, I am at a loss for words.  I've been sitting at this computer for a while trying to come up with something good/witty/appropriate/heartfelt (after weeks and weeks of trying to come up with something in my head) and I am just at a loss for words.  To say that it's indescribable, while totally true, doesn't seem to cover it either.  I felt...  I don't know.  I just felt.   Maybe I could say that I felt full.  Maybe.  Or maybe I could say...  I got nothing.  I'm still, almost seven weeks later, totally at a loss as to how to describe it.

Maybe I could tell you that you should take every positive feeling you've ever known... and wrap them together... and just drench yourself in them.  Perhaps that will serve to give both of us- you and me- a starting point...