reflections on a hospital stay

• But first one more I remembered from the recovery room: there was a woman on the other side of the curtain waiting to go have her c-section. I of course eavesdropped to try to distract myself from the horrible shaking. They had such a hard time finding a vein to put an iv in that they called in a nurse who puts IVs in on shaky helicopter rides. Yikes. Anyway, as they were asking her all the questions, when they asked her if she'd been taking her prenatal vitamins, she said, "Oh no. I never took those. I took Flintstones. Chewable." It was good comedic relief for me.
• I had Elliott at a big, bustling, downtown Chicago hospital and Lily at a smaller, sleepier, Catholic hospital. Ironically, it's in a way snazzy part of town but the people who live in that area go even further out into the suburbs to have their babies at the even snazzier hospitals. I got really great care (until my last night-more on that later)! The biggest difference was that they just left us alone. In Chicago, there was a nurse or someone else bothering us every 7 minutes to take our temperatures or blood pressure or wanting to take the newborn's picture! Here, they would leave us alone for 2-3 hours at a time! I got so much more rest and my recovery was better for it.
• The food was quite decent, especially the oatmeal raisin cookies. There was a really large menu that I looked at, decided what I wanted, and picked up the phone and ordered it for every meal. So that was awesome! In Chicago I only had the same 4 choices or so. There were seriously 25 entree choices in this menu.
  
• The hallways of the hospital had been recently remodeled but the rooms hadn't been. The walls were sporting a sweet floral wallpaper border and the floors had that dirty look even though I hope they were clean. Also, every time I opened my eyes, St. Mary greeted me. I made Brian take a picture of her.

• So the nurses were all nice. Some hilariously quirky. Brian and I kept talking about how fantastic everything was going, compared to after E was born. She was nursing well and I was doing pretty good. I was happy with my care until my 3rd and final night. About 2AM I woke up, hobbled to the bathroom, and couldn't pee. Agony. "Oh you probably have a bladder infection or some trauma down there from the catheters." Great. "Go send your husband to get you some cranberry juice and drink as much as you can." Just what you want to hear when your bladder is about to explode and you can't even squeeze 10 drops out. A few hours later I had probably walked a couple miles, pacing back and forth across my room because I was too uncomfortable to sit down. I had tears streaming down my face as I was having to nurse Lily while walking back and forth because my bladder was so full I couldn't bear to sit down. The distraction of walking around right after a csection was preferable. I had Brian go down to the nurses' station and tell them they better do something NOW to help me. I was losing my mind. They ordered a pill, piridian, from whatever floor the pharmacy was on that was going to make me more comfortable and as a bonus, turn my pee Easter-egg-dye-orange. 2 1/2 hours later (!) the pill finally arrived. What was the hold up? The pharmacy never got the order or something. So once the morning nurse got on duty and she called to (re)order it, it came in 15 minutes. Oh the agony of those hours. The clencher came later that day when I found out that pill is over the counter and Brian could have picked it up when he got the cranberry juice. Oh the things I know now that would have been helpful to know before then...So there was some sort of horrible breakdown in communication among the nurses and my oncall doctor that night. The hospital knew they had really screwed up so they brought me a little teddy bear wearing a pink sweater with a cross on it as an apology for my aggravation.
• I finally got to leave the hospital late that afternoon! I was so glad to be home after I waited an hour (!) at Walgreens for my pain pills and antibiotics for my UTI. I was in tears by the time I left there too. I was so tired, it had been such a long day with no rest the night before and I seriously couldn't understand why it took an hour when there were 6 pharmacists working.

Dressed in normal clothes and ready to leave! See ya, room 567 (thought that was the coolest room number).

Home at last!


3 days old