Five Days!
Astute readers will notice that we’ve skipped a day in the countdown. This is not a mistake—my C-section has been moved up one day, to Wednesday, October 26, which means my hospital adventure will come to an end one day sooner. The change has nothing to do with anything medical; just my doctor shifting around her schedule. (And she assured me there was nothing problematic about my already-large baby.) So the end is truly in sight.
I am more ready than ever to get home. Lucia has a cold, and I want to be there for sick-baby snuggling; she visited today and spent most of the time just sitting on my lap, playing with her Minnie Mouse, not even venturing closer to our other visitors, a friend and her two-and-a-half-month-old baby.
And I’m ready to get off the 14th floor—Antepartum—where my condition, though technically high-risk, pales in comparison to what I’ve been hearing about the other women. I haven’t had a Big Bleed, I’m otherwise healthy, and the health and well-being of my baby has never once been in question, even when I was first admitted—if she’d been born then, she might have had a bit of NICU time, but she ultimately would have been fine. But my previous roommate, whom I wrote about in the last post, did end up delivering her 25-week-old baby, who was just over one pound and is looking at a three-month NICU stay and who knows what complications. She also, in the same delivery, had to deliver the baby’s dead twin. I’m not entirely sure how you ever get over something like that. And my current roommate, who arrived last night, just found out her 22-week-old pregnancy is no longer viable because there is almost no amniotic fluid; her water broke, and I heard the doctors telling her the pregnancy would have to be terminated. (I obviously don’t know all the details. I know only the bits I’ve heard through the curtain.)
Anyway—it’s all horrible, hearing these poor girls crying over on the other side of the room while I read the Twilight books and watch ABC sitcoms on my computer and enjoy visits from my beautiful daughter and await the arrival of a kicking, already thriving second daughter. I know there are reasons for keeping me here, but I definitely feel like a fraud, and a very fortunate one at that. It feels like the worst kind of gloating to even have a picture of Lucia tacked up by my bed.
I am more ready than ever to get home. Lucia has a cold, and I want to be there for sick-baby snuggling; she visited today and spent most of the time just sitting on my lap, playing with her Minnie Mouse, not even venturing closer to our other visitors, a friend and her two-and-a-half-month-old baby.
And I’m ready to get off the 14th floor—Antepartum—where my condition, though technically high-risk, pales in comparison to what I’ve been hearing about the other women. I haven’t had a Big Bleed, I’m otherwise healthy, and the health and well-being of my baby has never once been in question, even when I was first admitted—if she’d been born then, she might have had a bit of NICU time, but she ultimately would have been fine. But my previous roommate, whom I wrote about in the last post, did end up delivering her 25-week-old baby, who was just over one pound and is looking at a three-month NICU stay and who knows what complications. She also, in the same delivery, had to deliver the baby’s dead twin. I’m not entirely sure how you ever get over something like that. And my current roommate, who arrived last night, just found out her 22-week-old pregnancy is no longer viable because there is almost no amniotic fluid; her water broke, and I heard the doctors telling her the pregnancy would have to be terminated. (I obviously don’t know all the details. I know only the bits I’ve heard through the curtain.)
Anyway—it’s all horrible, hearing these poor girls crying over on the other side of the room while I read the Twilight books and watch ABC sitcoms on my computer and enjoy visits from my beautiful daughter and await the arrival of a kicking, already thriving second daughter. I know there are reasons for keeping me here, but I definitely feel like a fraud, and a very fortunate one at that. It feels like the worst kind of gloating to even have a picture of Lucia tacked up by my bed.
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