Continued from the previous post: Why I have joined the masses of people who don’t like hospitals…

I can be quite naive sometimes. Not having stayed in a hospital since in childhood to early to remember, I thought it would be quite novel. Stay in bed all day, have food brought to you, order it of those little mini menus, have visitors and flowers. Well now what’s so bad about that? Especially as I wasn’t going in because I was ill, this should have been quite fun in my opinion.

By 11 PM on the first night, I had changed my mind. Hospitals are noisy places, especially if they are as busy as the one I went to happened to be on that particular week. By my last night there they had amassed 18 babies, and it’s not a big hospital. I think that was capacity.

I also didn’t anticipate the loss of dignity of being prodded and checked all night long. Not the staff’s fault, they were just doing their job, but well, I just hadn’t expected it.

Summed up, the day staff were great, I met two very helpful nurses, and the rest of the ground staff were cheerful and friendly. The night staff: a little less so. I drew the card for the ‘first night on the job’ nurse who twice dropped my bed instead of lowering it gently, not going down well with the C-section. She then said “I’m sorry, it’s my first night on the job”, which, well, she shouldn’t have. I’d rather not have known. And the nursery staff were thin on the ground and not very sympathetic to a worried first time mom.

With 18 babies and 16 moms (2 sets of twins) the attendance alarms didn’t stop ringing. The hospital rooms had two beds each in them. Nights one and two I shared with a lovely friendly mom of twins. Her babies where in incubators due to being born a bit premature, so she didn’t have them rooming in with her. I felt a bit bad for her sharing a room with me because I had the crying infant who wasn’t feeding too well, and she could otherwise have been getting some sleep.

But then the final straw for my camel: on night three they moved my roommate to another room, maybe it was at her own request – I don’t know, and moved in a new mom fresh from theatre for her c-section. So she had the nurses in and out all night checking on her. Well, I hadn’t slept much the first two nights due to being check on (night one) and feeding problems with Aidan (night two) and now on night three I get awoken every time they check on my new roommate, because the night staff aren’t very subtle about doing their jobs. And the door creaked. Each time they left after checking on my roommate I’d get up and fix it so it didn’t creak, and then a few hours later the nurse would leave it in its creaking position again. Well, night three wasn’t a great one for sleep either.

Thankfully I have the most wonderful husband who was at the hospital by 7 AM each morning to hold his child while his mom stole a shower or an hour’s sleep because by the end of night two I felt so much animosity towards the nursery night staff I no longer wanted to take Aidan to the nursery at all.

I was ready and packed before the doctors did their rounds on my discharge day, so eager was I to flee my captivity. I think I would have had a serious melt down had the doc’s decided that either Aidan or I needed to stay in even a few hours more.

But they didn’t. And it’s never felt so good to be home as it did that Saturday.

Four weeks on we are doing well. Aidan isn’t the totally non fussy calm baby I had kinda hoped for, but he’s a great kid. He has some colicky / reflux symptoms, but It’ll just take some time for his digestive system to mature, and we’re weathering that storm okay for now.

And he’s just ever so gorgeous, see for yourself:

It’s been three weeks to the day since Aidan made his grand entrance, so I figured I best record that experience before I forget it all in a sleep deprived stupor. That and June’s been prodding me to post something

The worst part of the C-Section, as predicted by me and probably because I thought it would be, was the drip needle in my arm. I was doing great till they put that in. It hurt, and then I had a reminder in my left arm for the next 45 minutes or so that I was just about to go into theatre and get a giant needle stuck in my back and have my belly cut open. My coping strategy for these things is usually denial, so the reminder wasn’t appreciated.

Hunny had a blast though, running around in his green suit (surprise! They had a size to fit him, I think it was 3 XL) taking pictures of everything.

While he was having his fun, I was in a bed in the waiting area which looked surprisingly like a corridor, and I became a temporary display on the head nurses tour of the labour ward for prospective future patients “And then they’ll wheel you out here while you wait to go into theatre, just like this young lady”. I didn’t mind that though, she was a really nice.

And then things stated to happen, I was wheeled into a theatre that was smaller than I expected (not sure why I was expecting something huge, probably a TV misconception), in a room full of woman. One of the reasons I choose a hospital a bit too far out of our way was because I met the loveliest gynecologist there, and she was a she. An added bonus that I wasn’t expecting was that she arranged a theatre full of women too. The pediatrician, anesthetist and all 5 or 6 nurses (who knew they’d need that many?) were female. Hunny and later Aidan were the only males there. It made the experience just that bit more relaxed.

The spinal was a bit tricky; apparently my vertebrae are a tad close together, so the anesthetist had to try a new location after she couldn’t get the needle in at the first one. I had a fleeting fear that they may have to put me out all together, but the second spot did the trick. All this while my gynecologist was attempting to fold me double so the anesthetist could get a bit more room between the vertebrae. Bending double over my enormous stomach was a tad difficult.

The spinal was an interesting feeling. Kinda like I was wearing a really thick pair of denims and someone was tugging on them, while I knew it was actually my flesh that they were tugging on. Odd, but not entirely unpleasant.

Once the spinal had kicked in, everything just happened in a blur. My blood pressure shot up, Hunny tells me, but I didn’t notice that. The ladies got to work super quickly, and just a few minutes later my boy was born.

I spent pretty much the rest of the theatre time watching the nurse and pediatrician working with my boy while Hunny sat between us and held my hand and his.

Here’s our instant family, a few minutes old.

Then Hunny went with our little guy to the nursery for whatever else they do with babies in the nursery while the doc stitched me back up. Runaway was playing on the radio in the background. I loved that song when I was just a little kid and it was the theme song for the TV program Crime Story, I was all of seven years old when that show started. I’m pretty sure it was on way past my bed time, but my folks weren’t the strictest on that, or maybe they just liked to laugh at my efforts to sing along

We were reunited when Hunny brought Aidan back to me once I was back in my room, and we had a great bonding session. He was totally alert for hours after his birth, just checking everything out.

So that was Aidan making his way into this world. Quite pleasant even if not typical. It was only later that night when things started to go downhill…

But I’ll post that at another time.

but a little late. It was hard to choose just a couple from the 200 + photos Hunny took on the first day alone!

On my brithday:

Homecoming:

Yawn:

Have so much to say, but it will take sometime to pull together into a post… I’ll get there…

I type this with one hand while Aidan John van Niekerk sleeps against my left shoulder.

We were discharged at around 11 AM this morning, and not a moment too soon. Not liking hospitals much at the moment, but more on that and some photos tomorrow.