Back-ish

Well. Here I sit, rocking my 2.5 week old little guy and slowly emerging from the fog. Guess I'll start with his birth story so I have it written down somewhere...

The day before I kind of sensed that something was about to happen. I even ate an ungodly amount of gluten free pasta that night and justified it to my mom, saying "the odds are good that I won't be eating tomorrow so I better carb load!" Sure enough, contractions started around 3am on Nov 17. I guess my body has an eviction time for babies - Georgie was 38 weeks 6 days and little man was 38 weeks 5 days.

I timed out the contractions for a couple of hours, and they stayed around 5-6 minutes apart and got stronger so I decided it was go time. (After showering and hot rolling my hair - what am I, a monster??) I didn't want to bother the on-call doctor or really my mom, who I woke up literally as I was walking out the door. Drove myself to the hospital which probably wasn't the smartest since when I arrived they checked me and I was dilated 4-5 cm already. In significant pain so went ahead and asked for an epidural, which I got around 6:45am. My mom found a sweet friend to watch Georgie and was in my room by 8am.I didn't need Pitocin this time as I was progressing just fine on my own, and was psyched that my amazing L&D nurse who delivered Georgie had randomly picked up a shift and was my nurse again! #teamlajunta

My doctor was having HER baby shower that day, so I had a different doctor, but I had met him before and he (literally) wrote the book on pregnancy that they give to all patients, so I knew I was in good hands. (Little did I know how important this would be later...) Labor was more or less a breeze this time, aside from a little scare when the baby's heart rate dropped after they broke my water. I teared up when extra nurses ran in and I had to get a oxygen mask, but it evened back out after that. He popped out at 10:53am with the cord wrapped around his neck (teared up again), but he was AOK. The cleft chin threw me for a second, but now I'm obsessed with it.

Then the complications started. My placenta wouldn't come out and there was a real chance of my getting wheeled back for surgery, but the doctor literally stuck his entire arm up there and got it out (thank GOD for epidural!). Back in my recovery room, my mom left to get Georgie and it was just me, my brother and my new baby Beau. Around 3 or so I started feeling horrible pain - like the worst pain ever. Worse than labor. I almost puked several times, was writhing in the bed and finally started sobbing. My brother got worried and called the nurses in. They said I was just swollen from the tearing and gave me a pain pill. Within 30 minutes I needed another one, and it wasn't working. Thank god one of them suggested they bring the doctor back in to take a look - he did and immediately said "it's a hematoma. If you can't pee we are going to put you under and do surgery." Of course I couldn't pee, and of course had insisted on eating a dozen Taco Cabana tortillas earlier (no more gluten free for me!!), so they had to do another spinal and I was awake. The doctor said it was a simple 10 minute procedure, but it ended up taking an hour and a half because they couldn't find the source of the bleeding and even had to bring in another surgeon. Turns out it was my artery. Apparently it was a lot worse than I was told - my bladder could have burst, these bleeds can be fatal, etc. And the whole time I can hear what's going on and feel like I'm in a weird episode of Grey's Anatomy. The doctor told me in his 34 years of practice he had only seen this one other time and had no idea what happened. Great!

The baby stayed in the nursery overnight so I could rest (ha), getting donor breast milk. A friend came to see me around 9:30 the next morning and I sobbed that I hadn't seen the baby in over 12 hours, and she marched outside and within 30 seconds they wheeled the baby back into my room. Yay for friends!

Recovery has been a little painful, but seems like everything is healing up like it's supposed to. So weird and scary though!

Welcome to the world, Beau. So glad you're here.