I gave birth at the same time as our mulberry tree. By the time I was discharged from hospital the black and purple berries had carpeted the ground she shaded. Our rottweiler was also pregnant. Once boisterous she was now a lazy frump always sitting in the shade of the car. I knew exactly how she felt.
I'm not going to go into a lecture about how childbearing should not be a punishment and maternal mortality stats yada yada, but dude. My entire medical portfolio is based on the fact that I had children. And I would not trade my yummies for anything in the world. They and my husband are my greatest blessings which I only attained though grace. God's, that is.
My experience with having a baby this time round with my second has been what others term as traumatic, complicated, and some doctors would say 'interesting'. Because with doctors you are usually reduced to a case whose value increases on whether your stories can be shared with other patients or colleagues. So yes I was interesting.
It all started when I was booked for an elective cesarean section scheduled for 8:30am. My husband and I checked in at 7pm the day before, taking advantage of the quiet weekend vibes. I had only just finished packing 'the bag' that afternoon and had been looking forward to some quiet time away from our toddler. She is my angel but at 9 months gestation I was a beached whale with a kid throwing rocks at me. Laughing and running away. So we checked in, I said goodnight to him at about midnight and I fell into a deep sleep.
2:00am. Drama starts. A nurse walks in and switches on the main light of my room. Walks away and does not switch it off. One of my greatest peeves is noise and light. Maybe I'm hypersensitive to them but they often start an argument with me. I ignored it this time contemplating whether this was enough reason to ring the alarm bell. Ha, first days I was so scared to ring that bell. Hilarious. I left light on and proceeded to open my WhatsApp and went online to read all the news bits of whether Serena Williams tantrum was justified. Suddenly I felt the need to go to the loo and as I sat up torrential waters came down. My waters had broken. The doctor was called and said we are 5 hrs away from theatre, let's watch and wait and if she goes into labour we go in early. I phoned hubby apologetically saying you may have to come earlier. He was like better now than later, we will have the whole day free. Ever the optimist.
Labour started about 10 minutes later. The whole point of an elective is to avoid labour. Nope, someone somewhere said hayi she must also feel. Within the hour I was in theatre.
I was under general anaesthesia so to me the surgery lasted 5 seconds. One moment I am politely greeting the theatre staff, amazed at how cheery and energetic they were at this hour. The next moment I am in the hospital corridor and all I see is my husband at my feet. They placed the baby by my tummy and I said "I can't see him". Repeatedly. I wonder why no one listened to me. Later i was told that in fact what I sounded like I had said was "gerjhu bash we rie". This part I don't remember well. Being drugged up.It must have been so embarrassing no one told me what else happened. I just came to later on in the day.
The next two days were a blurry euphoria as I had become a resident peth-head. Now, the most confusing question you can ever ask a post-op patient who happens to be a doctor is 'do you want more pethidine? ' The answer is yes but no but yes but no but yes but maybe later.
You can't leave such a decision to me. I am that doctor who chases away addicts from the 24 hour who come with all sorts of excuses to get pethidine. And you are asking me when I'm high on the stuff, pain-free and all is right with the world. Who knows what I will feel like if you stop it?Will I be judged for asking for it? Will I get addicted? Shouldn't I wean off so that I go home sooner? But what really was the depth of my surgery? What was on the other side of this pain medication? Finally the decision was made by the anesthetist who said 48hrs then we stop. I felt so proud to announce to the nurses that this will be my final dose. I did not take advantage of my position.
It all dawned on me what had happened to me in surgery when my doctor came to review me in the morning. I had had 5 surgical procedures done at once over a period of 3 hours. My Hb had gone down from 13 to 9. The surgeries were all necessary involving my small gut, entire gut, appendix, ovarian tubes and of course the actual cesarean section. Most of this was due to the fact that my abdominal and pelvic organs were glued together by adhesions. This had been caused by my previous cesarean section and previous myomectomy which had made having a baby even possible.
So here I was 5 in 1 weaning off pethidine. At least I still had paracetamol intravenously. Diclo suppositories. This is a story I would rather not tell now involving nurses and my pride.
I developed what they call paralytic ileus where your gut goes on strike because you fiddled with it too much. I was not passing gas or solids. The accumulation was painful. Drum for a tum. I couldn't take laxatives because it would irritate the small gut surgery. Only glycerine suppositories. But these didn't really work coz there was so little solid made to pass.
In all this, congratulations you are a mum! And breastfeed you shall. Visitors you shall entertain. Two hourly interruptions to do this or that. The hospital I was in has people seeing you every 30 minutes. They are relentless. So they basically wasn't much rest. Things like bath time at 5 am. Who does that? My IV line was changed 4 times as it kept tissueing. The final one was going through a tiny vein and with every infusion of drugs I would feel the sting of the drugs. I would. Now know the tactics of each nurse to get the medicine to move.
But all this was the better part of my ordeal, things were about to take a turn.
To be continued
I'm not going to go into a lecture about how childbearing should not be a punishment and maternal mortality stats yada yada, but dude. My entire medical portfolio is based on the fact that I had children. And I would not trade my yummies for anything in the world. They and my husband are my greatest blessings which I only attained though grace. God's, that is.
My experience with having a baby this time round with my second has been what others term as traumatic, complicated, and some doctors would say 'interesting'. Because with doctors you are usually reduced to a case whose value increases on whether your stories can be shared with other patients or colleagues. So yes I was interesting.
It all started when I was booked for an elective cesarean section scheduled for 8:30am. My husband and I checked in at 7pm the day before, taking advantage of the quiet weekend vibes. I had only just finished packing 'the bag' that afternoon and had been looking forward to some quiet time away from our toddler. She is my angel but at 9 months gestation I was a beached whale with a kid throwing rocks at me. Laughing and running away. So we checked in, I said goodnight to him at about midnight and I fell into a deep sleep.
2:00am. Drama starts. A nurse walks in and switches on the main light of my room. Walks away and does not switch it off. One of my greatest peeves is noise and light. Maybe I'm hypersensitive to them but they often start an argument with me. I ignored it this time contemplating whether this was enough reason to ring the alarm bell. Ha, first days I was so scared to ring that bell. Hilarious. I left light on and proceeded to open my WhatsApp and went online to read all the news bits of whether Serena Williams tantrum was justified. Suddenly I felt the need to go to the loo and as I sat up torrential waters came down. My waters had broken. The doctor was called and said we are 5 hrs away from theatre, let's watch and wait and if she goes into labour we go in early. I phoned hubby apologetically saying you may have to come earlier. He was like better now than later, we will have the whole day free. Ever the optimist.
Labour started about 10 minutes later. The whole point of an elective is to avoid labour. Nope, someone somewhere said hayi she must also feel. Within the hour I was in theatre.
I was under general anaesthesia so to me the surgery lasted 5 seconds. One moment I am politely greeting the theatre staff, amazed at how cheery and energetic they were at this hour. The next moment I am in the hospital corridor and all I see is my husband at my feet. They placed the baby by my tummy and I said "I can't see him". Repeatedly. I wonder why no one listened to me. Later i was told that in fact what I sounded like I had said was "gerjhu bash we rie". This part I don't remember well. Being drugged up.It must have been so embarrassing no one told me what else happened. I just came to later on in the day.
The next two days were a blurry euphoria as I had become a resident peth-head. Now, the most confusing question you can ever ask a post-op patient who happens to be a doctor is 'do you want more pethidine? ' The answer is yes but no but yes but no but yes but maybe later.
You can't leave such a decision to me. I am that doctor who chases away addicts from the 24 hour who come with all sorts of excuses to get pethidine. And you are asking me when I'm high on the stuff, pain-free and all is right with the world. Who knows what I will feel like if you stop it?Will I be judged for asking for it? Will I get addicted? Shouldn't I wean off so that I go home sooner? But what really was the depth of my surgery? What was on the other side of this pain medication? Finally the decision was made by the anesthetist who said 48hrs then we stop. I felt so proud to announce to the nurses that this will be my final dose. I did not take advantage of my position.
It all dawned on me what had happened to me in surgery when my doctor came to review me in the morning. I had had 5 surgical procedures done at once over a period of 3 hours. My Hb had gone down from 13 to 9. The surgeries were all necessary involving my small gut, entire gut, appendix, ovarian tubes and of course the actual cesarean section. Most of this was due to the fact that my abdominal and pelvic organs were glued together by adhesions. This had been caused by my previous cesarean section and previous myomectomy which had made having a baby even possible.
So here I was 5 in 1 weaning off pethidine. At least I still had paracetamol intravenously. Diclo suppositories. This is a story I would rather not tell now involving nurses and my pride.
I developed what they call paralytic ileus where your gut goes on strike because you fiddled with it too much. I was not passing gas or solids. The accumulation was painful. Drum for a tum. I couldn't take laxatives because it would irritate the small gut surgery. Only glycerine suppositories. But these didn't really work coz there was so little solid made to pass.
In all this, congratulations you are a mum! And breastfeed you shall. Visitors you shall entertain. Two hourly interruptions to do this or that. The hospital I was in has people seeing you every 30 minutes. They are relentless. So they basically wasn't much rest. Things like bath time at 5 am. Who does that? My IV line was changed 4 times as it kept tissueing. The final one was going through a tiny vein and with every infusion of drugs I would feel the sting of the drugs. I would. Now know the tactics of each nurse to get the medicine to move.
But all this was the better part of my ordeal, things were about to take a turn.
To be continued
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