After a sufficient amount of time in recovery I was moved to the mother baby unit. I was and still am so very thankful for the Duramorph that was injected into my spine during the section. My abdomen was numb and would remain so for about 24 hours.
My nurse came in and told me about the unit. My vitals were taken by the PCT. The area around my incision was briefly looked at. I had a large bandage over the area so they were basically making sure I wasn't bleeding through the bandage. My nurse asked me if I planned on breastfeeding and explained that it was very important for preemies to receive breast milk. I told her that I did want to breastfeed. She brought in the pumping supplies and pulled the pump out from the corner. She showed my mom and I how to hook up the equipment, then she and my mom propped me up as best they could and I started my first pumping session. After it was done my nurse explained how I had to label my milk bottles to make sure my baby got my milk. She wrote down all the medications that I had taken in the past 24 hours on my white board. She gave me my son's 8 digit milk account number. My husband and I can still recite that number in our sleep. Once I had pumped, someone had to take the milk down to the nursery where they would keep it in the refrigerator until we went down to the NICU.
The neonatology resident came to my room and we began signing medical consents for various medical procedures that needed to be done on our tiny baby. We asked him when we could go down and see Oliver. He told us that once they got the PICC line and IV's in place then they would call our nurse and let us know we could come down. He also told us that once Oliver was in the NICU he started to have trouble breathing and had to be intubated. He quickly left our room and jogged down the hallway.
So we sat in my room and waited for the call. We were is such a state of shock and I was hardly able to move thanks to the incision that sliced through my abdominal muscles. The PCT came back after an hour and a half and told us that she would be taking us down to the NICU. I was hauled into a wheelchair and my catheter bag was hung on the wheelchair and I held onto the IV pole. I was anxious and very nervous to see Oliver. Once we arrived at the NICU, which was conveniently one floor below my room, we were introduced to the scrub in procedure. Since I had an IV in my hand I was not allowed to scrub and instead was given gobs of hand sanitizer gel to rub into my hands. Justin had to do the full on scrub. He had to scrub in for 2 minutes up to his elbows and had to remove his watch. Once we were "clean" we were taken to the back room to our baby. I do not mean to be callus about what I am about to say but it was my first reaction; I looked at Oliver and felt no wave of maternal feelings. You could have shown me any baby and told me that it was my child and I would have said okay and believed you.
The child who had been cut from me 4 hours before was in a plastic box (we called it the fish tank) that was steamed over from the high level of humidity the inside of the tank was set at to protect his skin. He had on a very tiny diaper that was about the size of a panty liner. His body was wrinkled and a deep purple and I could see some traces of the bruises on his back. Due to his prematurity and the large bruise he had 3 bili lights (two shining on him and one he was laying on) to keep him from developing severe jaundice. Since he was under the lights his eyes were covered. He was on an oscillating ventilator, meaning that it gave him very short bursts of air very quickly. His whole body was vibrating from this. He had a PICC line in his upper arm and lines coming out of his umbilical cord. He also had teeny tiny blood pressure cuff wrapped around one leg. One of his feet had the pulse ox wrapped around it. His head was positioned in neutral with a funny shaped beanbag. This was my baby and I still did not know what he looked like. I got pretty teary looking at him and thinking that his first experiences were filled with pain. I felt like a horrible person.
Oliver's nurse explained what was happening and how he was doing. She was very nice and answered all our questions. I don't remember what we asked her. I kept looking around the room where there were 8 other babies and 5 nurses. We were told that we could come back and visit whenever we wanted. We left after seeing him for a few minutes as I needed to lay down.
Our first meeting with our son was not the quiet, exciting experience that we had planned on. We were so very scared for this little baby who weighed about the same as 9 sticks of butter. Once again I did not know what would happen and I did not know if he would live or if he did, what kind of life would he have. Justin and I had been thrown into the trenches and were now at war against the forces that would harm or kill our child. Welcome to parenthood, it is never what you expect it to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment