She's born... now what?

I thought I’d feel a gush of emotions when our daughter was born, but I honestly felt none of that, mainly because our baby came into the world in every way I had hoped for it not to happen. All I thought about was the horrible experience I had going through Gynae visits alone, being in the hospital alone and being induced and laboring alone because of the covid pandemic and all the restrictions. I had also hoped, prayed, and prepared for a vaginal birth, but here I was in an ice-cold theatre room, shivering like a vibrator while being stitched up. I couldn’t do skin-to-skin, I couldn’t latch her onto my breast, I couldn’t even touch her cause my hands were placed like Jesus on the cross in Calvary.

 

I don’t know if I mentioned that my husband cannot stand the sight of blood. He sees a drop of blood and he’s ready to faint, so the surgeon suggested that after our daughter is born and I had seen and touched her for a few minutes, my husband would take her out to the recovery suite while they stitch me up. At that point, I felt like nothing was going according to plan and being alone was a norm, so I agreed.

After what felt like a decade, I was finally wheeled into the recovery suite.

 

My memory of this period is very foggy, but I do remember the spinal block and epidural wearing off and being in so much pain, even my blood pressure kept fluctuating.

I asked for pain medication and was given PARACETAMOL – yeah! I got paracetamol after a c-section because that’s apparently standard procedure in Germany, and do you know what’s funny? I wasn’t expecting any better cause my sister in-law had already told me about her c-section.

 

I generally have a high pain tolerance, but that pain was so bad, and the paracetamol wasn’t doing anything, that at some point my blood pressure would increase, and I’d pass out. Off course, the nurse thought I was exaggerating my pain levels and passing out cause ‘’I’m tired’’, so my pleas for stronger painkillers fell on deaf ears.

This is me in the recovery room after being given Paracetamol

Eventually, the kind midwife that shared her food with me started her shift and came in to check up on me, she asked how I was doing and offered me a cup of water or tea, which I declined cause the pain was that bad. She then told the nurse that she’s 100% certain that I’m not exaggerating cause in the week I’ve spent there, I drank at least 5L of water a day and I’m now declining a cup of water.

Thanks to the wonderful midwife, I got a better and stronger painkiller, my blood pressure stabilized, and we were finally transferred to our family suite in the maternity ward at around 02h00 (in a normal scenario, you spend about 3hrs in recovery).

 

Sidenote: it’s very important to have someone that will advocate for you when you’re vulnerable cause sometimes our husbands don’t know what to do or say in such situations, that is why having a doula or midwife you trust with your life on your side is important – probably even more important that picking a hospital.

 

When I tell you that hell would’ve been better than my birthing experience – believe me! The first 72 hours of our daughter’s life were scenes from a horror movie. We went through all the emotions new parents could possibly go through, joy, happiness, disappointment, anger, fear, contentment, trauma – all of them! But I’ll write about that in the next blog and hopefully finish off the birthing/hospital series so we can move on to nicer things, lol!