First of all I would like to apologize, if not all following this is fully coherent, but if you operate on next to no sleep, your memory tends to get a little fuzzy...
As morning rolls in, the night is showing its toll, apparently I look like a zombie and to be honest, I feel like one, too, but it is part of the deal and I’m more than happy to do it to help Val. Today is a very busy day with a lot of things on the agenda, as Val is supposed to be discharged tomorrow and there are many things that still have to be taken care of.
The thing still bothering Val the most is the fact that she cannot get up on her own and that every little movement to sit up, turn around and basically anything else as well takes a lot of effort and she has to almost completely rely on her hands and wrists to move herself around, which is not good, if you have problems with your wrists to begin with.
While Nico is still on 15 ml of formula every two to three hours, Val can only have liquid food, such as soup, jello and popsicles, as she has to wait for the first bowel movement to pass before she can have solids, which kills her, because she is hungry, but cannot eat anything with sustenance and as yesterday everything went so fast and we could not eat anything, she is starving. She is trying to nurse Nico, but for one his mouth is still too small to properly latch on and it also starts to give Val back pain already, which is not a good start...
Mommy has pneumatic compresses on her legs to ensure that the blood circulation gets and keeps going, it doesn’t take long until we get sick and tired of hearing it, same for the beeping of the IV, but unfortunately there is no way around it. Val gets checked by the nurses every now and then to see how she is doing, including the incision, which none of us know of how long it will take to heal.
Throughout the day Nico can spend more and more time with us in the room, mostly sleeping, obviously, as the whole ordeal took a lot out of him, but it is an indescribable feeling to hold him in my arms (of course the same goes for Val) and see this little bundle of life...*taking break*...*sigh*...sorry, still makes me emotional every time I think about it. Due to his low birth weight, he is being poked in the heel every hour to three hours to check his blood sugar level and he does not like it, neither do we, because we can see how much it hurts and with time his heel gets black and blue and has several scabs, so that they are starting to have problems actually getting blood for the test.
We try to take naps whenever we can, but it is horribly hot in the room (or rather the whole floor), there is constant noise and things overall are just not helping, because whenever Nico and/or us are asleep, somebody comes in to check on him or Val, so still not much rest.
As the nurses change shifts, we encounter a few really good ones (Slavka as the prime example) and a few that are, well, some that we do not feel as comfortable with, let’s put it like that. We understand that they are busy, but if you ask for something that you need, it should not take 30-60 minutes and repeated requests to actually get it or have someone come over to begin with, so that is another thing that gets grating after a while and as we do not really have much else to do or to take our minds off things, it is getting pretty bad pretty quick.
The first breakthrough comes when Val has her first bowel movement and she finally is able to eat – and whatever they tell you about hospital food, think again, because the stuff they serve here is freshly made, well seasoned and most of all a LOT! Both Val and I can eat until we are full and still have leftovers, so that’s a definitive plus (no, not everything can be bad, come on).
Later on the decision is made that I get the night off and sleep at home, while Linda stays overnight to help Val with whatever she needs and I am too tired to fight it. When I get home, I prepare the bed for my dad, who will land from Germany tomorrow, take a shower and then basically pass out for the night as the last two days take their toll...
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009 - The arrival
I had a feeling as if something would happen on this day since Tuesday (my birthday and Nico’s due date) and in the afternoon I get a call from Val at work that she is worried, she hasn’t felt Nico move in a few hours. So I tell her to call up Health Link and see what they say and just as expected they say that we should go to the hospital to have it checked out. Coming home we debate what we should bring and for some reason we agree that we will bring the whole nine yards, car seat, Val’s bag and Nico’s bag, just in case.
We get to the hospital at 15:45 and proceed to the triage area, where we get signed up and then are asked to wait until we would be called. And wait we do, more than an hour and we haven’t even seen a nurse or doctor yet, so this is getting somewhat frustrating, because we don’t know what is happening inside Val’s belly, if something is wrong and time might be of the essence.
So after over an hour we finally are called in and after getting her blood pressure checked, Val is hooked up to a heart monitor for Nico and the machine starts to record. Well, supposedly, because it kindly produces a paper jam that nobody notices, but more on that a little later. One of the, well, we’re not exactly sure what she was (as in resident, student etc.), but Erin comes in and goes through a whole questionnaire, she is very dry, but that makes her so sympathetic and soon she is almost through and we notice the paper jam of the printer. Now the problem is that they need a continuous 20-minute printout and thanks to the machine not printing and/or losing connection with Nico’s heartbeat, it takes about one and a half hours in triage until they finally have the printout they need and it is time to see the doctor. In the mean time I make my way downstairs into the little convenience store to see, what I can dig up in terms of food, as it is getting late, and all I can gather up is some Sun Chips for Val as “lesser evil” of the stuff that they have there, and some mustard seasoned pretzel mix for me, the dinner of champions…
Doctor Li comes in and has a look over the printout and then come the decision that they want to keep Val in right away, because Nico’s heart rate is too high (average of 170 bpm) and during contractions the decelerations go all the way down to 80 and even 60 and they are concerned about the well-being of Nico, so we pack up our stuff and move over to L&D (Labour & Delivery) and settle into a room there. Monique is assigned as our nurse and they plug Val up for more heart rate monitoring, blood pressure and dilation whatnot, and then things go pretty quick. We already knew that the heart rate was too high, but now we also find out that Val is still only 2 cm dilated and that it would be too risky to wait for everything taking its natural way, so the verdict was: emergency c-section. Yay!
Now the flurry of activities goes into overdrive, IV, epidural (almost keeled over there, didn’t see anything, but just the imagination of what they were doing back there was enough to make the room odder and odder), catheter, not sure what else they stuck into her. In the mean time Val’s mom Linda, Richard and his godmother-to-be Terese arrive, so I fill in the latter two, while Linda proceeds into Val’s room to talk to her. As the surgery is coming closer, the question is, if I want to/can be in the operating room with Val and looking at my reaction to the epidural, I decide that while I would like to be there, it might be a better idea for Linda to be in, so that the nurses and doctors could fully attend to Val and not potentially scrape me off the floor…
As they wheel Val away, I re-park the van, so it won’t be towed (would be the crowning thing for the evening), when I get back, the nurse shows me to the recovery room and I wait…and wait…and wait…until they wheel her in and in comes Nico, all bundled up and what a pretty boy he is, no wrinkles in the face, neither of us show the reaction(s) we had hoped for, but if you look at it in hindsight, everything went so fast and so different, how could we actually have managed to get the right feeling and reaction?
After going through some paperwork, we are being transferred over into the maternity ward, where we get our own room, which is nice, and the first night is one to remember… Thankfully they manage to find a cot for me, so I don’t have to sleep on the chair, but to be honest, there’s not much sleep to be had, for various reasons, the atmosphere of the hospital, Val not being able to get up on her own, get water or basically anything else, following Nico into the nursery etc. etc…
We get to the hospital at 15:45 and proceed to the triage area, where we get signed up and then are asked to wait until we would be called. And wait we do, more than an hour and we haven’t even seen a nurse or doctor yet, so this is getting somewhat frustrating, because we don’t know what is happening inside Val’s belly, if something is wrong and time might be of the essence.
So after over an hour we finally are called in and after getting her blood pressure checked, Val is hooked up to a heart monitor for Nico and the machine starts to record. Well, supposedly, because it kindly produces a paper jam that nobody notices, but more on that a little later. One of the, well, we’re not exactly sure what she was (as in resident, student etc.), but Erin comes in and goes through a whole questionnaire, she is very dry, but that makes her so sympathetic and soon she is almost through and we notice the paper jam of the printer. Now the problem is that they need a continuous 20-minute printout and thanks to the machine not printing and/or losing connection with Nico’s heartbeat, it takes about one and a half hours in triage until they finally have the printout they need and it is time to see the doctor. In the mean time I make my way downstairs into the little convenience store to see, what I can dig up in terms of food, as it is getting late, and all I can gather up is some Sun Chips for Val as “lesser evil” of the stuff that they have there, and some mustard seasoned pretzel mix for me, the dinner of champions…
Doctor Li comes in and has a look over the printout and then come the decision that they want to keep Val in right away, because Nico’s heart rate is too high (average of 170 bpm) and during contractions the decelerations go all the way down to 80 and even 60 and they are concerned about the well-being of Nico, so we pack up our stuff and move over to L&D (Labour & Delivery) and settle into a room there. Monique is assigned as our nurse and they plug Val up for more heart rate monitoring, blood pressure and dilation whatnot, and then things go pretty quick. We already knew that the heart rate was too high, but now we also find out that Val is still only 2 cm dilated and that it would be too risky to wait for everything taking its natural way, so the verdict was: emergency c-section. Yay!
Now the flurry of activities goes into overdrive, IV, epidural (almost keeled over there, didn’t see anything, but just the imagination of what they were doing back there was enough to make the room odder and odder), catheter, not sure what else they stuck into her. In the mean time Val’s mom Linda, Richard and his godmother-to-be Terese arrive, so I fill in the latter two, while Linda proceeds into Val’s room to talk to her. As the surgery is coming closer, the question is, if I want to/can be in the operating room with Val and looking at my reaction to the epidural, I decide that while I would like to be there, it might be a better idea for Linda to be in, so that the nurses and doctors could fully attend to Val and not potentially scrape me off the floor…
As they wheel Val away, I re-park the van, so it won’t be towed (would be the crowning thing for the evening), when I get back, the nurse shows me to the recovery room and I wait…and wait…and wait…until they wheel her in and in comes Nico, all bundled up and what a pretty boy he is, no wrinkles in the face, neither of us show the reaction(s) we had hoped for, but if you look at it in hindsight, everything went so fast and so different, how could we actually have managed to get the right feeling and reaction?
After going through some paperwork, we are being transferred over into the maternity ward, where we get our own room, which is nice, and the first night is one to remember… Thankfully they manage to find a cot for me, so I don’t have to sleep on the chair, but to be honest, there’s not much sleep to be had, for various reasons, the atmosphere of the hospital, Val not being able to get up on her own, get water or basically anything else, following Nico into the nursery etc. etc…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)