The Hospital

Thursday, bright and early, we headed to the hospital.  The C-section was scheduled for 9:30, so that meant we had to be there by 8:00.  We were a little worried about being late because of the morning traffic, but we made it right on time.

Nathan's mom had come the night before, so she was at home getting the kids some breakfast.

My parents had left SE Idaho at 4:00 a.m. so they could get there in time, so they were still on the road as well.

The last two times we went to have a baby I ended up wearing this awful red shirt to the hospital.  Not that the shirt is awful (I actually love how it fits, especially at the end of the pregnancy), but that shade of red does not compliment my skin, even if I'd been wearing makeup.  I'd planned to get a "last pregnant pic" in the same shirt since it was becoming a tradition, but by the time we got settled I was in a cap and gown and it was too late!  Hopefully you can still appreciate the big belly.

My nurse, Lori, had me signing tons of forms, huzzah.  Then I got to wait.  And wait.  There was an emergency C-section that had to go in before me, so things were delayed.  Despite my earlier good mood and excitement, I suddenly started to get kind of mad.  I knew that was dumb, so I quickly got over it.  But I was already hooked up to the IV and sitting on a very uncomfortable table (you couldn't call that thing a bed) and I wanted my catheter!  Some people may hate catheters, but I truly love them.  After getting up to go to the bathroom n^billion times a night, how nice to have a little bag take care of it for me!  I didn't look forward to waddling to the bathroom with my entourage of tubes and machines.  So I held it. 

My parents arrived and Nathan went out so they could come in to see me, one at a time.  I can't remember a single thing we talked about, but I remember how glad I was that they were there.

I finally got in to surgery around 10:30.  I worried how I would handle things.  A few months ago, I went to St. Luke's to tour the facilities so I would know what to expect.  They showed me around the various floors, and then took me down to the operating rooms.  I wasn't allowed to cross a certain line on the floor because I wasn't scrubbed down, but the nurse said she could take a picture of the room on her cell phone and show it to me.  As she took a few steps up to the little square window of the operating room door, I stayed behind the line.  Suddenly, a multitude of horrible feelings assaulted me: fear, anxiety, helplessness.  I started to cry.  The nurse turned around and stopped when she saw me.  I was so embarrassed.  Wiping my eyes, I apologized, and tried to explain, "I thought I was over this.  I didn't know it bothered me anymore."  She was very understanding.  "Some PTSD from a previous birth?"  She advised me to tell my nurses about it when I checked in.  But still...

I remembered how lonely it had been when they were doing my spinal with Vander.  Just me, a nurse I didn't know, and pain.  I had really wanted Nathan to be there.  So after this conversation outside the operating room, I talked to my doctor about my feelings and asked if my husband could be present for the spinal. 

"No," he said, "it's hospital policy.  He can't come in until after it's placed.  But what do you care?"  He asked in his typical teasing fashion.  "You'll have ME there!"

"You?" I asked, confused, thinking of my last surgery.  "But you don't come in until the prep is all done, right?"

Indignant, he replied, "Who do you think does the prep?"

With my last surgery, it was the nurses.  They were the ones that had been there for the spinal and had disinfected my stomach.  But not this time.  Because of a new procedure St. Luke's has for trying to keep the OR extra-sterile, a nurse did swab my stomach with stuff before I went in to surgery.  But as soon as I got there, it was Dr. Lowder who took over.  I braced against him as the anesthesiologist put in the spinal (ow!) and Dr. Lowder told me to relax and breathe.  Then, he did a second sterilization of my belly.  Through it all, he and the nurses where upbeat and chatting with me.  The scary feelings never came.  Soon, Nathan was scrubbed and at my side.

 

Dr. Lowder started cutting when my stomach was completely numb, but I was slightly concerned that I could still feel and move my toes.  Thankfully, nothing hurt.  But I could feel a lot of weird yanking and movement going on, and it felt so strange that I started to get nauseous.  I couldn't throw up--I just felt awful.  A nurse put an alcohol swab in front of my nose to try to get rid of the nausea.  Suddenly, another nurse JUMPED on my stomach to push the baby out.  See that scrunched-up grimace?  I'm sure I was making the same face as I groaned!

Wow, this was not pleasant.  At least I wasn't in any actual pain.

Before anyone could announce her birth, my baby let out a wet, gurgling, LOUD cry.  I could only think, "Oh my goodness!  Where is the small little newborn cry they are supposed to have at first?  We are in trouble!"

I waited for them to hold her up so I could see her, like had been done with Vander.  But no one did.  Or at least, not as quickly as I would have liked.  So I started chanting, "I want to see her!  I want to see her!"  It's so unfair that I do all the work and everyone else gets to see her first!

Finally, they took her over to the warmer to clean her up and I got to see her from afar.  My eyes filled with tears which I couldn't wipe away.  I begged for a Kleenex so I could see!

Nathan says she had more vernix (the white stuff on her skin) than either of the other two kids.

At last, I got to hold her, skin to skin.  Nathan had been trying to see her eyes.  She kept stretching her eyelids and moving them around as if she was trying to open them, but couldn't. 

But when they put her on my chest, her baby blues opened right up and looked at her mommy.  Hello, Precious!

She was gorgeous.  And she didn't look a thing like the other kids.  I was stymied.  Where were the facial features my kids shared?  I just kept staring at her.  It was so weird!  She looked completely different to me!

They sewed me up.  Gradually, I sensed some discomfort in my right shoulder.  It felt tight, like I wanted to rub it.  Then it started to hurt.  I mentioned the feeling and was told, "Oh, that's just a gas bubble.  It's a normal thing that happens.  You just have to wait for it to work itself out."  But it HURT.  A LOT!  I have to admit, I was a big whiner.  The pain kept building, and so did my complaining, until I was begging them to do something about it!  I wanted a shoulder rub, STAT!

They hurried to give me some pain meds, which is all they could do.  It didn't make it go away, but it became bearable....after a time that was far too long!

It's funny, but with the nausea, weird feelings, and shoulder pain, this surgery was more uncomfortable than Vander's birth, but not traumatic at all because I was okay emotionally.  Just goes to show how important mental and emotional health is.  I would rather go through a lot of physical pain than have a mental breakdown.
Nathan followed the baby to the recovery room and then I soon joined them.

It's so weird how I look like my eyes are closed in every picture where I'm laying down.  It's just the angle.

 

I urged Nathan to go tell my parents that everything was fine.  The nurse held the baby while he went to get Mom.  But Mom had only had a few hours of sleep, so she was taking a nap in the car.

Papa got to hold her first!

Worth waking up for!

When I told Mom what her name was, she said, "Oh, you're so silly!" and rushed over to the nurse to take the baby.

I think she had a feeling that we might name our baby after her because a few months ago she said something to the effect of "don't".  But what she didn't know was that I had picked out this name in my late teens or early twenties, after a conversation in which she lamented that her

name wasn't a long, pretty name that could be shortened for fun.  (Which is why she named me Sandra/Sandi, by the way.)  So it got me to thinking about names that could be shortened to Lani.  I finally settled on Bellana (Bell-LAWN-uh).  Belle or bella mean "beautiful" in French and Spanish.  Lani means "sky" in Hawaiian.  So she is our little sunrise!  And her middle name is Lynn, just like mine and my mom's.  (All three of us are the second-born daughter!)  We're not sure yet what her nickname will be: Bell, Bella, Lana, Lani--there are a lot of possibilities!

I will admit that some of the inspiration for the name may have come from B'Elanna Torres, a half-Klingon crew member on Star Trek: Voyager, one of my favorite series.  When Bellana doesn't get fed as quickly as she wants to she definitely has a Klingon's short temper.  But at least she doesn't have ridges on her forehead or an apostrophe in her name!

Nathan left soon after that to go get the kids and his mom from our house.  They were so excited to see their little sister!

Annalee used to beg to hold Vander a lot, even after he was so big that he didn't appreciate it anymore.  But that was nothing compared to how much she wants to hold this baby!  (It's amazing what 2 more years and a longer attention span will do!)  Now she can sit and quietly hold the baby for a half hour!

Vander thought she was "so coot" and loved holding her too.  We told the kids her name.  About a week later, we were introducing Bellana to Nathan's coworkers and they asked Vander what his baby sister's name was.  "Guana," he informed them.  Hahahahahaha!  I had never thought to ask him how he says it.  At least it's not guano!






Mom and Dad left to drive back to SE Idaho (they are crazy--wonderful, but crazy) and Nathan took his mom and the kids home, then returned to stay with me.  Bellana and I practiced breast feeding.  It didn't take too long for her to fall asleep. 

I was in the recovery room for a long time.  During that time my legs and feet finally went fully numb so that I couldn't move them.  (I laughed that it didn't happen until the surgery was over!)  Then it got to were I could move my toes but couldn't feel them, so I had to look at them to see if they were moving.  I got really itchy.  Itchy, itchy, itchy!  They gave me something for it which made me incredibly drowsy.  I also hadn't had much sleep the night before so I was ready for a nap.  But the itching didn't stop!  So I would be almost asleep, then have to rub my face, especially my nose.  I had to remove my nose oxygen tube so many times as I scratched my face, also my chest, arms, etc.  (Makes my face itch now just remembering!)  But the biggest problem was that when I truly started to fall asleep, my blood oxygen level would drop, setting off an alarm.  Then the nurse would tell me to breathe.  Over and over and over again!  I was going batty!  I was soooooo tired, I just wanted to sleep!  Itch, scratch, relax, ALARM!  I was getting pretty grumpy, being woken up so many times.  Each time the alarm would sound I would take some huge, angry breaths through my nose and say, crossly, "I'm breathing!  I promise!"  Eventually, I had all my leg feeling and movement back but they couldn't let me go to my room because of my oxygen.

Don't get me wrong: I understood why this was so important.  Remember how I stopped breathing after having Annalee?  Well, they had to make sure that didn't happen again.  And even though I wasn't on Phenergan, the culprit back then, I experienced depressed breathing after Vander's birth too.  (I remember the nurse pestering me, "Breathe, Sandi!" in the recovery room so much that I pulled off the finger monitor and tossed it away.  Then, when the nurse appealed to Nathan to "get me to breathe more" I snapped that they should hook me up to oxygen or something and let me sleep!)  Now it was happening again.  At last, they sent me to my room around 2:00 p.m.  I was still having depressed breathing, but they decided to turn the monitor up really loud and let the nurses on that floor worry about it.

I finally got some food!  I had been told to only have broth, but apparently the kitchen didn't know that.  I had a really yummy sandwich instead, hee hee!  And it all stayed down!  I tried to nap, but the alarm kept going off.  I was annoyed to find that the nurses couldn't hear it (although I'm sure my neighbors on both sides could--MAN it was loud!) 

The Women's Floor was extremely busy.  All of the 33 rooms were filled and 5 more moms were stuck down in their Labor & Delivery rooms since there were no more rooms available.  When I'd gone on the tour I'd been told that they try to give C-section moms one of the larger rooms since we stay in the hospital longer, but I was in a tiny corner room, very far from the nurses' station.  I guess I was lucky to get a room at all!  The room was barely wide enough for the bed with Nathan's chair on one side and my IV on the other.  Every time I pushed the Nurses' Call Light they couldn't get to the panel behind my bed to turn it off, so they had to turn it off at the Nurses' Desk.

At least I had a nice view!

That night was pretty rough since the alarm went off every time I started to drop off.  Eventually they hooked me back up to some oxygen and then the monitor only went off half as often.  Ugh, what a night!

Friday morning I promptly removed the pulse oximeter from my finger and had Nathan turn off the machine, even though a sign said not to touch the equipment.  I was done with that torture device!
Nathan had had a rough night too.  The foldout bed/chair wasn't too comfortable, but the worst part was he was freezing with the temperature of my room turned down to 60 degrees.  Those hormones!  The same thing had happened to me after Vander's birth.  I'd turned the temperature down to 60 and then begged the nurses for a fan, which they didn't have.  They eventually found me an ice pack to make me more comfortable.  Planning ahead this time, I brought my own fan to the hospital and used it throughout the night in my 60 degree room.  Poor, skinny, fatless Nathan!  We had our special "Stork Dinner/Breakfast" together (applesauce crepes for me and eggs and bacon for him).  Then he went home for a while to nap and bring the kids back to see their sister again. 

It was bath time!

Because the other kids got their baths soon after they were born, I missed them.  The staff at St. Luke's was in no hurry, though, so Bellana got her first bath on her second day, and I got to be there!

Remember how I thought she didn't look like her siblings?  Part of this was her hair, which had come out looking strawberry blonde!  Seriously, we were like, Where did this red hair come from?  The other two had dark hair at birth.

 The other factor was that with her eyebrows and eyelashes so blonde, it looked like she didn't have any.  When she had a hat on and was wrapped in a blanket (which was all the time in my cold, cold room) I was just staring at a face of scrunched up skin with nothing to break it up.

 



 

 

But after her bath, when I saw her whole body, I suddenly saw it.  THERE it was!  She DOES look like my other kids!

Daddy and Frammie waited outside the nursery with the kiddos, watching the whole bath.

 

I made met awesome milestones that day, like, getting to pee on my own and having my IV removed.  Throughout the day nurses came and asked me how my pain was.  "Zero," I replied, surprised.  One of them finally said, "Well, if that changes, let us know and we'll get you some pain meds."  Curious, I asked what pain meds I was currently on.  "None," she said.  I replied, "Well, I know I haven't taken any pills, but there's something in my IV, right?"  Nope.  Incredulous, I said, "You mean, since the morphine they gave me yesterday right after surgery I haven't had any meds, and I have zero pain?"  Yep.  Unbelievable!  There is definitely a difference between going in for a scheduled C-section and laboring for a day first.  I know which I prefer!

That night I sent Nathan home to sleep.  (I'd wanted him at the hospital the first night in case I stopped breathing, but since he ignored all the alarms as he huddled in his cocoon I could see that was a waste of time!)  My shoulder pain finally started coming back, and the breastfeeding was giving me afterbirth pains.  When my nurse offered me some Norco I said yes, at first, but then changed my mind when I realized I should have my oxygen monitored if I tried a new drug.  I wanted to sleep!  So I decided to put up with the pain and get some rest.  Two hours later when they brought Bellana in for a feeding, I was--OW!--ready for the Norco.  They hooked up my nemesis, the pulse oximeter, again.  I dragged the night stand up next to my bed so I could see the readout.  Amazingly, it stayed at 98 percent oxygenation all night and the alarm never sounded.  I was incredibly relieved.  I had started to wonder if I always had low oxygen when I slept and had even scheduled an appointment with my primary care physician for a sleep apnea test.  (It runs in my family, but I was bummed to think I might have it.  So glad to see I don't!)  My OBGYN decided that I am just terribly sensitive to narcotics.  Good thing I'm not a druggie!

The next morning, Saturday, I asked the nurse what I had to do to get out of there.  She sent the pediatrician and OBGYN by to okay us for release.  Then I took a shower and the nurse removed my staples, applying steri-strips to my healing incision.  We filled out a ton of paperwork.

Before, while I was waiting for Nathan to come, I turned on a song on my laptop that had been running through my head for three days: Brighter Than The Sun by Colbie Caillat.  Then I got up and danced!  It was minimal movement dancing, of course, but I just felt so good and was excited to get out of there.  Here are the lyrics:

"Oh, this is how it starts, lighting strikes the heart
It goes off like a gun, brighter than the sun
Oh, we could be the stars, falling from the sky
Shining how we want, brighter than the sun

"I swear you hit me like a vision
I, I, I wasn't expecting
But who am I to tell fate where it's supposed to go?

"Oh, this is how it starts, lighting strikes the heart
It goes off like a gun, brighter than the sun
Oh, we could be the stars, falling from the sky
Shining how we want, brighter than the sun."

We got to leave around 1:00 p.m.  Nathan managed to carry all our stuff without the help of a cart.  An orderly wheeled me off in my chariot--uh, wheelchair--and we waited for Nathan at the ER entrance.

The ride home wasn't too bad.  We even stopped for Wendy's on the way.  I remember that when I came home from the hospital the other two times I was exhausted by simply getting in and out of the car!  When I got to the stairs (we have a two-story house) I was ready to go up them with great toil and have to stay upstairs forever.  Instead, I was surprised to discover that climbing stairs didn't hurt anything at all, as long as I went slowly.  Yay!

Nathan's mom stayed through the weekend and helped us get enough sleep by taking care of the older kids.  Nathan was off for the rest of that week, so that helped a lot too.

My mom came and stayed with me this last week when Nathan had to go back to work.  I've made it through the first breastfeeding problems and now things are going great.  I don't take any pain meds most days.

My brother is coming to help this next week when Nathan works.  Aren't I the luckiest?  My family is so awesome!  Bellana is starting to sleep for 3-4 hours at a stretch, so hopefully I will be able to manage on my own after Steven leaves.  Now, if only we could get rid of this awful reflux she has!  I'm going through a ton of laundry!

The kids both want to hold Bellana all the time.  The day we brought her home, we brought out two baby dolls that we'd bought at Target.  Now they have their babies to dress, change, feed, and hold too!