Birth story, part IV: Epilogue

After Tim held Elle, Gloria loaded me and my IV bags on to a wheelchair and gave me Elle to hold. The hospital plays Brahm's Lullaby every time a baby leaves L&D, and as we savored our trip to the Mother & Baby Unit, where we would spend the next 24 hours, I texted people to tell them of Elle's arrival. I took a photo with my cell phone camera as we cruised in the wheelchair to our recovery room and posted it on Facebook, too - I'm pretty sure I was not the only one surprised that I'd been at work the night before and 12 hours later now had a new baby.

I was settled in to my recovery room, and Tim and Elle disappeared - the nurses took Elle to be bathed. I was able to eat some lunch, call my grandma and my parents, and then I eagerly waited for my daughter to come back :) I still couldn't believe that just a few short hours earlier, I'd been showering, not really knowing if *this* was it or if we'd be told to go home and wait for more progress. Now I was eating my first meal as a mother.


The rest of our stay in the hospital was pretty uneventful. My vitals were checked regularly, I struggled to use the bathroom and was in a fair amount of pain despite the meds that I was given, and getting in and out of the hospital bed was not fun. We cuddled with the baby, we fed her, changed what seemed like an infinite amount of diapers, and just stared at her. Tim left early in the evening to get an overnight bag for himself and check in on the cats, and he came back with some food, some balloons and a thoughtful, gorgeous present for me. It's a diamond and ruby necklace - the birthstones of me and my daughter, respectively.


Apparently if I had an epidural, I would have gotten a simple bracelet. If I had a c-section, it might have been a box of chocolates. Tim based the mock gift scale on effort put forth by me, so if I had delivered at home without an epidural, I apparently would have received a new car. Since I delivered in the hospital without an epidural, I got a beautiful necklace. That boy and his sense of humor ...

That first night we struggled - the baby was crying a lot, and since the three of us were in the same room, if one of us was up, it seemed all three of us were up. At one point, I'd just gotten the baby to sleep, and the nurse came in to check my vitals and woke her up. Tim and I managed to get a three-hour nap, and then we were pretty much up for the morning, which included frequent visits from various nurses, hospital staff, etc. - it was quite the revolving door. My doctor had said I'd probably stay in the hospital until Monday, but a nurse told me it was up to me if I wanted to leave on Sunday or Monday, and after the frequent interruptions and thought of spending another 24+ hours sitting in the hospital bed, I decided I wanted to go home on Sunday. We attended a special discharge brunch the hospital has, where you get a refresher in baby care basics and some free food and baby stuff, and Elle got some blood tests done. Then we packed up our stuff, got our final paperwork from the hospital staff and set out to leave the hospital as a family of three.

And here are some videos of Elle in the hospital and Elle meeting the cats, which was quite humorous.