Another six flags ride later, I was in a new room, reunited with my tiny little family.
My sweet friend Abby would be Dillon's admission nurse and help with his first time breast feeding. With a blood pressure cuff still inflating every 15 minutes on one arm, an IV inconveniently placed in the other, and enough drugs on board to have me feeling like I was on another planet, I'd need all the help I could get. I fumbled around, like I didn't know what to do, coordination just.....off......but Abby is a pro and set me straight.
Some things I vaguely remember, like they were a distant dream, but others stand out in my memory vividly, like how badly my entire body was itching like I spent the night rolling around in poison ivy, or how this brand new baby boy was born starving. No joke, I could hear and feel his stomach growling. I always educate new parents to get their rest the first night their baby is born, since the babies usually get really sleepy after their very first feed and then start cluster feeding on night two, but our boy didn't get that "usual baby behavior 101" memo. He went straight to the breast and basically screamed at the top of his lungs any time he was off of it for the rest of the night.
We knew everyone was waiting on pins and needles, so Patrick got started on sending out the announcement texts. A couple of hours later, my parents where in the room, ready to meet to their newest family member.
Soon, we'd be on our own, just a couple of newbies, thrusted into the world of parenthood. Although some things were making great turns for the better, like my bright red urine (from Dillon's position bruising my bladder) making it's transition back to yellow and by body finally starting to diurese all the fluids I'd been third spacing (we had previously been worried about my low urine output), but it'd be another 24 hours until we could kick the serial blood draws (to make sure the Magnesium was at a high enough concentration to be therapeutic but not too high to be toxic), and constant IV pump beeping. Life in the hospital is sometimes vital, but it's not piece of cake to be awake all night with a crying baby and interrupted all day by various entities as soon as the baby goes to sleep.
The next day, both sides of the family came back for more snuggles......except Dusty, who was present, but refused to hold Dillon on account of him being "too little".
I was still on bed rest and drugged, my eye lids trying their darndest to close on me in mid-conversations. Later that night I had my epidural pulled and got out of bed for the first time. Wow.......Who am I? Who's body is this? Are there pillows between my legs? It got a little more easy with each attempt.
By day 4, we'd tirelessly lived in 4 different hospital rooms. It was no one's fault. We'd been put in one of the nicest labor rooms for the induction, but had to move to a c-section room after surgery (to make space for other laboring patients), since I'd be having an extended stay in L&D with my condition.
When we were finally able to move to postpartum, the hospital was overwhelmed with patients and we got put in the tiniest on the floor (slim pickin's), and after some discharges were made, our postpartum nurse felt bad for our situation and moved us to a better room.
Needless to say, when we packed up our bags on Friday to go home with packets of discharge paper flying at us, we were so overjoyed we wouldn't be packing any bags again for a while, that we almost didn't even realize how crazy it was we were about to be at home, alone, with a newborn baby who was so tiny his infant hat and shorts swallowed him whole!
And so it began: our transition home.
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