Birth: The Final Installment

Both babies are on their little mat in the sun “napping” so I have a few minutes to wrap this tale up. Maybe.

So Nicole returns to the hospital in record time, which made me feel a lot better. Suddenly, the nurse who was sorta ignoring me was all over me, touching my knee, answering my questions and showing a good deal more concern than she did or me before. (I asked her for ice chips about three times and she never brought them. And I was her only patient at the time.) Then more doctors started coming in. They added up my symptoms and came up with a big fat We have No Idea what is going on. One doctor came in to report my blood work results. She said that all of my tests looked fine except one. That “bad” test showed that my platelet levels were low. And that my kidneys were only functioning at 75 percent. What? And that there was still a lot of blood I my urine. My blood pressure was rising high and my heart rate was still low. And an alarm kept going off because I wasn’t breathing enough.

At this point it is around 9:00 am and I still had not seem the babies. We asked them to be brought to us and we were informed that they can only come into recovery to feed. The doctors said I was not going to get out of recovery any time soon, which really unnerved me. I said that the babies hadn’t been fed since 2 in the morning so bring them now. I was so tired (I had now been up for more than 24 hours) and weak from the surgery that I barely remember it. But I do remember being VERY emotional and hormonal.

I meet with kidney specialists, my ob, other obs, urologists and residents. I was wheeled down to have a kidney sonogram performed by a woman with absolutely no sympathy for the fact that I just had surgery, so jerking my body around to get a better angle hurt a lot. The radiologist told me that my left kidney was dilated, but other than that all looked ok.

So the doctors were no closer to figuring out what is wrong with me. Kidney failure was bantered about, toxemia (a type of pre eclampsia) and something about a piece of my kidney dying off. To this day they still don’t know what was/is wrong. But my blood levels stabilized and my urine slowly become less bloody, so that was a good thing.

I had a full on break down sometime in the late afternoon while still in recovery. I had been there for over 12 hours and asked for the babies to come. They said yes, but a half hour went by and no babies. Then 45 minutes. We asked again and we were told they were too busy to bring us our babies. At that point I lost it. I just started crying and shaking and not making any sense. That snapped the nurse into a higher sense of urgency. She called the nursery again and arranged for an immediate delivery of babies, as long as Nicole would go and help them. So Nicole leaves and two minutes later, people come in to take me to a sonogram. I flipped again. I couldn’t believe that I was not going to see them. Meanwhile, who was feeding them? I told them NO BOTTLES.

Nicole wheeled them in just as I was about to be wheeled out. Given that I was I hysterics, they let me stay with the babies for a few minutes. How nice of them. It seemed unnatural that I wasn’t allowed to spend time with them. Especially since when they were with me, all of my vital signs started to even out.

I was moved to a regular room (finally) around 6 pm. I was so grateful to be down the hall from my babies, who were in the nursery. We put our names on the list for a private room, but we were told that there wouldn’t be one available. So we settled into a very cramped shared room, and no sooner than I started to breastfeed the babies, a nurse came in and said a private room just became available. Nicole literally ran down the hall with all of our stuff and within a half hour, we settled into our new giant room, complete with a hospital bed for Nicole to sleep in and our very own bathroom.

To this day, the doctors still aren’t sure what happened that day. My doctor said she would probably call it toxemia, but she wasn’t happy with that because it isn’t a neat fit with the symptoms. I chalked it up to the trauma of surgery (hand surgery too) and the epidural and all the top offs and all of the other meds pumped into my body. How could that not affect me? It was just bizarre, because I had for the most part a pregnancy free of traumas and bed rest and issues. To get pre-eclampsia or toxemia after the babies are born just seems weird. Also, I don’t discount the theory that my bladder was traumatized accidentally in the surgery. But the doctor said nothing happened to it during the C Section. So I guess we may never know. Once again, I am a medical mystery (the lovely pyogenic granuloma was Mystery No. 1).

I am still blown away that we were allowed to check out of the hospital on Sunday. But in the end I was happy to recover at home, even with still having blood in my urine and a not quite functioning kidney. I am happy to say that the pain of the C Section is long gone at this point, but now I am dealing with some seriously painful shoulder/arm pain.

Pictured above is Madeline with me after (after her first bath) and Avery with Nicole (after her first bath). In fun news, Avery lost her belly button stub last night and proudly joins her sister in the outtie club. Maybe that changes over time and becomes an innie.