Cesar is Born (part three)

In the last part, I was finally stitched back together. Vincent managed to hold himself together through the birth, and was dutifully at our side. However, Cesar’s biliruben levels climbed and the doctor decided our son had to go under the lights on Friday night… meanwhile I was about to be discharged Saturday morning!

Will I be as strong as I had hoped to become? Will Cesar be alright? Will they ever let us go home? And will Vincent decide that he’s had enough, and run off to Mexico? In the thrilling conclusion to Cesar is Born, and thus my pregnancy, find out just what will become of our new tiny family!

 Above: Cesar sleeping with his monkey, George. Some nurse took him away later, saying he'd develop allergies, but the other nurses didn't seem to mind. And Cesar didn't develop allergies. (May 2011)

                Vincent stayed by our side almost the entire time in those first days. He was hardly getting any sleep, since he was having to get up every few hours and check on Cesar. I was usually drugged up, bedridden. But by Friday, Cesar being under the lights, me being very unhappy about the situation, I could tell Vincent was starting to wear.

                Eventually I sent him home to get some real rest. While I had the little hospital bed he had to make due with a lousy futon. The mattress was old, lumpy, and worn. However, I’ll let them have their awful mattresses in exchange for the kindness they showed us. I can’t stand to this day that Cesar spent so much time under those lights. However, it could have been much worse. They could have taken him to the nursery.

                Instead, they wheeled in a set of lights to my room, and we were allowed to be with him at all times. He cried every time we had to blindfold him and put him back under the lights. He even displayed his fantastic motor skills, as several times he tried to pull off the blindfold… only to have us put it right back on. The only thing he had was his chupi (pacifier), for comfort. In the beginning, he spit it out, until we gently placed his hands over it, guiding him on how to hold it. He learned very quickly, soon holding it in all on his own.

                Every three hours we were allowed to take him out for feeding. Then we would turn him over and put him back under. Belly. Then back. Belly. Back. The funny thing is, while the nurses often assured us that, “You shouldn’t put your baby on his stomach at home. Here we are monitoring him though,” they would just as quickly leave the room and not return again until three hours had expired. I found that somewhat ridiculously funny. Monitors… sure.

                Anyhow, I sent Vincent home to nap and bring supplies when he returned. He brought me my shampoo, soaps, and razor to shave. That’s right… I can’t stand the feeling of prickly legs even after birth.

               

                Saturday morning I was loaded up with prescriptions. Painkillers and iron pills. I never got the iron pills, because the pharmacy didn’t have them on hand and I just never went back for them. 

                I am very grateful also to say that, while the situation was rotten, we were made special arrangements. We were taken to a room on the floor where premature babies were kept and given a room they had free. That way I could stay with Cesar while he remained under the lights. The downside was there was only a couch, which I claimed since I wasn’t going home. Vincent went home to sleep Saturday night by himself.

                Both of us were dearly praying that by Sunday Cesar would be alright. I prayed to the gods for it, and Vincent (being the funny guy he is) kept saying it would be awesome if we could go home since there was a PayPerView Sunday evening.

                Cesar was tested early in the morning. His levels had only dropped by miniscule points, but the doctor explained that biliruben levels were factored in with how long a baby has been alive. In essence, if a baby has a 10.4 after a few hours of birth that’s extremely bad, but if he has 10.4 after a day or two it’s not nearly as bad, which is about what they had gotten Cesar down to. The next step, he explained, was to remove my son from the lights. They would retest in a few hours and as long as the levels were still dropping we would be allowed to go home.

                We had a great nurse as well. She was very pro-breastfeeding. The previous nurse had fed Cesar lots of formula, saying, “Look, I’m barely supporting the bottle. He really wants it.” I told our “good” nurse about this, that Cesar had eaten so much he had thrown up. She checked the formula, noted how much he had eaten and also that he had eaten the ounces I had managed to pump in my off time. Noting all this, she stepped in, very authoritative, and said, “I wouldn’t give him any more bottles. He’s overeating now. You’ve got plenty of milk and you don’t need formula.” She had also been essential in trying to help me get Cesar back to latching on. In fact, I remember her standing by me, watching as Cesar rejected me over and over and explaining that it was ok, he was just spoiled by the quickness of the bottle, but that we could get him back to the breast if we tried hard enough.

                I remember, at one point thinking, “I can do this. I don’t want to. I hate being here. But I can if I have to.” I prepared myself for the worst. I mean, the worst wasn’t really all that bad, if I thought hard enough about it. Cesar was breastfeeding with just a little resistance. Only a couple days ago I had been weeping, giving up and giving him the formula, resigning myself to his cries and thinking how much we were going to have to spend on formula, how dearly I had wanted to bond and breastfeed only. But now, I had control again. I had a good support system, and I was slowly getting my strength back. Cesar couldn’t be in here forever. And being in the premature floor made me really appreciate everything. Cesar could have been born months early. He could have been born with a really terrible complication. Sooner or later, we would be going home and I could deal with everything knowing that.

                After being retested, Cesar was a 9.something. He hadn’t dropped much, but it was enough to get us home!

                I was so happy. I couldn’t get my things together fast enough.  I remember being so anxious. We grabbed everything we could, bags and bags of things that had been brought to me over the course of our stay. I was thrilled to get out and be on our way!

               

                I remember going home. I remember Vincent rushing back out to buy a few things before his show started. We’d made it home. Finally we had our first night together. Vincent’s vacation time ended that Sunday, and he wanted to go straight back to work to avoid losing any money. This was another reason I had so desperately wanted to be home. I had wanted to feel like a family, in our little home before his vacation ended. We had made it just in time.

                 A wave of relief spread through me. I felt at ease. I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t nervous, and it was amazing realizing that no one was going to come breezing through our door ordering lab tests or asking questions. I didn’t have anyone looking over my shoulder as I changed his diaper or dressed him. No call buttons, no records to keep of changing times and feeding.  

                In the end.. I was satisfied with the birth. I had no painkillers and no pesky computer monitors. I had done it successfully on my own, and fast too! Vincent had done what we thought best as well, making the decision to call an ambulance rather than wait around. We had gotten very lucky with some of the staff, and not so lucky with others. But all that’s ok.

                I was so very happy, and still am. :) 

(to keep up with Cesar, visit his new blog at All Hail Cesar)

Cesar is Born (Part two)

                Welcome back. So where did I leave off? That’s right… the good doctor had just finished informing me that my stitches had been done incorrectly, that he would have to undo them and redo them. Cesar had been born in just an hour from when I noticed the contractions at 8 pounds 2 ounces with horrid facial bruising, and the state of my lower regions has left the audience (and myself at this point) hanging in suspense!

                So.. what will become of my son? Meanwhile, what on earth has Vincent been up to? And lastly, will I be stuck with two halves instead of a whole vagina?

Below: Here you can really see the facial bruising in contrast to his body. A side effect of the speedy labor. :( (May 2011)

                Well… I told the doctor I quit. I wanted to be put to sleep. I was just in shock that for all the trouble that dreadful nurse practitioner had put me through, and all the snotty remarks, that she had managed to do such a “bang up” job stitching me up (if I only knew her name…).

                Kindly, the doctor undid the stitches, and backed off. He told me he wasn’t going to touch me anymore, and they would prep me for surgery.

                Now.. time for visitors. Great… just great. I was in no position to put on my makeup, and people just started coming in. The Demerol was kicking in, as was the realization that not only was my labor over, but the hospital was just beginning its work. I wasn’t going to get to relax for a while. Vincent I suspect was in mild shock. He would tell me later that he started shaking as he beheld our son emerge. I hadn’t even realized he’d watched the baby come out, because during all of our disarray, he had been getting phone calls from all of our family members.  It was actually kind of funny. The nurses hadn’t even bothered to tell him to turn off the cell phones, just shouted at him as he stepped away to answer a call, “Grab her leg!”

                My father showed up, as did Vince’s mother, and even his best friend. Everyone kept saying how amazed they were, that when they heard I was going into labor they planned on coming by to see us in a day or two... not in just an hour! Then, my father did the worst thing ever… he snapped a picture with his phone!

                “Just leave,” I remember telling him. Of everything that was happening, I felt it like a crushing blow. Sure, everyone was having a grand time. Yeah, the quickness of the birth might be something to brag about, but I wanted to go home.. right then! And  a picture? Well, you know how I feel about those.

                At least my father had the decency to apologize and then offer to delete it. I don’t think he actually did, which still keeps me somewhat at odds on the inside about it.

                Anyhow, thankfully I was wheeled away to surgery. I don’t recall much, except that they had me curl forward. The doctor stuck a needle into my spine, and I felt a horrible pain course through my left leg. He said he had to take the needle higher, and then he removed it. I laid back, and I remember him asking me if I felt him.

                “Hey what are you doing?” I felt him pinch my leg.

                “You feel that?”

                “A little.”

                “The way I’m pinching you now, you’d want to slap me.” Then.. thanks to all the Demerol and drugs, I managed to get some sleep in. I was told later that I was in surgery for two hours, and it was probably a good thing.

                As it turns out, Cesar and I would pay dearly for our fast labor over the next few days. I suffered a hematoma forming inside of my uterus (a huge blood blister, they said), that they had to drain. They had inserted a long piece of what looked like plastic with holes into the blister to allow all the blood to flow out over the next two days. I also had third degree lacerations.

                Despite everything, I still asked, “So, I guess I won’t be going home tomorrow?”

                “No, no… you’re too injured,” the doctor had told me, “and you’re a new mom…” Okay, that last part kind of got on my nerves.

                In any case, with a ton of packing and fluids all dripping in (antibiotics) and out (blood, urine) of me, I was wheeled to a room I wouldn’t leave for three nights.

                Cesar was wheeled in to be with us, and I finally got to enjoy him. I laid him down beside me so he could try to eat his first meal from me. He did splendidly considering he had been given formula all the while I was out. I was finally ready to give bonding a shot.

                I won’t go into detail over every little hour, since it will mainly be bits and pieces of my recollection. I will tell you that with the nurses, it was hit and miss. I had some good ones, we had some sour ones. In fact, I had one nurse that told me all sorts of things about how I would feel and more, and then we came to find out that she didn’t even have children! Look, it’s cool if you are a nurse who wants to work with babies and moms.. but don’t try to tell me you know how I feel when you don’t!

                Anyways, the bad news, the doctor warned, was that any future doctor would be very resilient to let me have a natural labor if I ever had another baby due to the damage Cesar and I suffered from this one. In fact, he said they would most likely push for a c-section, or at the very least an induction (bleh). 

 Above: If you look closely, you can see that his eyes are bloodied red. Yeah, even his eyes suffered from the impact as well. The blood red wouldn't disappear for a few weeks. (May 2011)

                Cesar’s facial bruising had begun to raise eyebrows by Thursday night. Then again, apparently EVERYTHING raises eyebrows. A nurse whisked him away at one point because he cooed to himself while he slept. We thought it was cute, something he was doing to soothe himself. She said, “If he can’t maintain oxygen levels then we have a problem.”  She came back a while later, to let us know that he was fine… he was just (ahem, as we suspected!) soothing himself.

                Now granted, some have told me that I should be thankful that all these tests were done. That way if something was wrong we would know. I guess there is that… but sometimes I think, “Well just  how much can you test for? I mean really?”

The pediatrician in charge had done tests on Cesar’s biliruben levels, and they were climbing alarmingly fast. A nurse warned me that because he had such severe bruises, and yellow skin to begin with, there was a good chance that the body was unable to keep up with the disposal of the red blood cells. In essence, he had severe jaundice.

                By Friday he was under the biliruben lights. I won’t forget that, because I was going to be discharged come Saturday. I remember the pediatrician telling me they were going to put him under the lights, and a wave of depression came over me.

                “Cesar wasn’t well,” I thought. “I want to go home,” I remember thinking. “And I don’t want to come back.”

                It was my mother who inspired me to be a little stronger. I remember my father telling me that I wasn’t being fair. I told him, “What’s the point? If they send me home, what will I do? Do you really think that I should hobble back and forth from the house to the hospital to try and feed him every few hours, only to be told I have to give him formula anyway? No.. I’d rather just wait until they think he’s up to their standards of what’s ‘normal’ and then I’ll finally get to have him home.”

                Just the idea, coming back and forth, icepacks and pads all up my butt, in the heat, wobbling there was awful. They were good enough to encourage me to breastfeed him at the start, but there wasn’t enough milk to clean out his system, they said, and followed up with loads of formula. Cesar was already starting to reject breastfeeding, having taken to the quick flow of an easy bottle.

However, it was my mother who said, quite angelically, “Now Amanda, he needs you there. You’ll feel bad if you’re not there. Someone needs to hold his little hand while he goes through this.”

From that perspective, I realized I had no choice in the matter. I was a mom now. A tiger mom! I would have to call on the strength of the gods and do my best, because there was no time to be depressed about it. I needed to hold him no matter how much I hated the situation because he needed me to.