24 hours of hell (aka I somehow avoid the ICU)
So…Bubs is safely out and stable in the NICU, breathing with
the help of CPAP. The Moose takes the
first few pictures of her and comes to update me on how she is doing. The midwives switched shifts at 11pm and I
was left in the hands of a midwife who is extremely interested in and
knowledgeable about pre-eclampsia. I had
constant company for at least the two hours after bubs was born. The Moose came and went between my room and
the NICU and eventually, when things were settled down enough, he went to his
room at the backpackers where he had secured lodging for the night. I chatted about politics and the environment
and hospital waste with the pre-eclampsia midwife (as she shall now be known)
for a while, and I think I was reasonably coherent at the time.
I am writing this nearly 3 weeks later, so some things are a
bit hazy, but the one thing that I remember more than anything else was my
sense of the world shrinking. The only
things that seemed to exist were the things within my room. I didn’t think about bubs. At all.
The Moose said she was doing fine, and I think I just took that for
granted.
The thing is, magnesium really knocked me around. I thought I was feeling good at first, that
it wouldn’t be a problem, but as I progressed through the next 24 hours of it,
I grew more and more lethargic, found it harder and harder to concentrate, or
to even give a f*ck. I was on morphine
and Tylenol for the pain, and I have no idea what was in the spinal block or
how long that lasted or what effect it could have on me, but I am pretty sure
that 99% of that hell was the magnesium.
Like I said, my world shrunk down to include pretty much just myself and
whatever was within arm’s reach.
So, after the first few hours of constant monitoring, lots
of blood tests, and so on, the night (and the next day) fell into an hourly
routine that began and ended on the half of every hour. The world outside of this reality simply did
not exist for me. Because I was on fluid
restrictions, and was receiving fluid through the iv with the magnesium, once
an hour I was given 70 ml to drink. I
think that is something like 3 oz. It
had to last me until the next hour, when anything left (ha!) would be dumped
and I would get a new 70 ml. As I was
given that, my output through the catheter was measured, my ivs checked, my
blood pressure checked, and my reflexes checked (let’s just say those went from
pathologically brisk to nearly non-existent).
Periodically throughout the night and following day someone would come
to take my blood. All this would take
5-30 minutes depending on if the midwife stayed to chat (and I chatted a lot
with some of them), and during this time I would sip on my 70ml. Then I would sleep for half an hour until
they came back to start the whole thing all over again.
And every 4 hours overnight and 2-3 hours the next day the
midwives would come in to express colostrum from me, as I couldn’t do it myself
(hands were sooo weak, and still had iv in left and iv access thingy in
right). This they collected in syringes
to be sent to the NICU for bubs. I think
if it hadn’t been for them, I would not have had such an amazing supply of
breast milk for Bubs. I am so grateful
for this!! As awkward as it is having
nearly complete strangers playing with ones nips…
How I avoided the ICU…well, my platelets continued to fall,
but thankfully they stopped just short of whatever level they send you off to
the ICU. Since they were expecting me to
get worse before I got better, they were keeping a close eye on
everything. Thankfully I didn’t get that
kind of worse!! Of course, I didn’t find
this out until 2 weeks later, but I suppose there are just some things you
don’t tell a woman with a high blood pressure problem.
Anyway water became everything to me as my throat dried out
and my voice got raspy. I was obsessed
with the time, watching the clock until the long hand hit the 6 and I would get
my next bit of water. I was distraught
to discover that the milk I put on my cereal was taken out of my water (and the
iv fluid reduced to compensate). By the
time breakfast had come, my throat was too dry to swallow toast, and I barely
made it through the cereal. I did
discover I could eat some toast if I dipped it in the milk. But by this point just the effort of eating
and using my hands was getting to be too much (by the time lunch came I could
eat only the soup, and by dinner time I managed only 3 bites of pasta and a
couple bites of mystery dessert).
Pre-eclampsia midwife’s shift ended in the morning, and
incompetent midwife came on. By this
time I was feeling like ass and still had 15 hours of magnesium to go. Anyway this new midwife is probably perfectly
competent in most things, but she admitted to pre-eclampsia midwife in front of
me as they were doing the hand-over that she had never dealt with the after
effects of pre-eclampsia, and didn’t really know what she was doing. This became very obvious to me very quickly
as she took a very liberal stance with my fluid restrictions and output
measurements. It took a lot of
self-control to not drink up the extra water she accidentally gave me, but
somehow I did it.
And then she tried to kill me. Or at least that is how I am interpreting it!
About 10am she thought it would be a good idea for me to go
down to the NICU to see Bubs. I agreed,
for one because I felt like I should want to (really I just wanted water and
sleep), and secondly I felt pressured to do so.
Had she wheeled me down in my bed things may have turned out a bit
better for me. Instead she decided I
should go down in a wheel chair.
Let’s just say that if you can barely use your hands to eat
your breakfast, probably your legs can’t support your weight. In which case, forgetting to put the brakes
on the wheel chair probably won’t help matters!
Thankfully I managed to fall back on the bed when the chair pushed away
from me. By the time I got into the
chair, my hearing had gone and the room faded out. I had enough presence of mind to tell the
midwife and the Moose to wait for a minute because I wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was my
blood pressure tanking and me nearly passing out.
The trip to the NICU nearly did me in. The chairs here have to be wheeled backwards
in order to turn correctly, and me, my catheter and my iv were slow enough to
move, but to me it felt like we were zipping along. I could hardly see straight and was feeling
so nauseous! But we made it to the NICU,
I managed somehow to wash my hands (though probably not well).
Bubs was so small, and with so many lines and cables and
things, and she honestly looked a wee bit like a monkey! Her arms and legs were so skinny and wrinkly
that compared to them her head and abdomen seemed gigantic! It was hard to feel any sort of connection to
this poor little thing in an incubator, and as my blood pressure tanked again,
I started vomiting. The midwife took my
blood pressure just after this, and it was 90/50. And vomiting apparently raises blood
pressure, so it must have been lower than that!
Also, I vomited up half a litre of fluid. Half a litre that I couldn’t get back because
I could only have 70 ml an hour! I was a
little bitter about that.
At that point I had had enough and wanted nothing more than
to get back in bed where I felt at least a little less like death warmed
up. So my first glimpse of Bubs was
really just a quick peak at a tiny scrawny baby. I will write more about this sort of thing in
my next post, but I will say it has taken some time for this to feel real, and
to feel a bond between bubs and myself (which I know can be perfectly normal).
Other highlights (lowlights?) of my 24 hours of hell:
·
*My boss called, unaware that I was in the
hospital, to see if the Moose and I would be coming to his wedding, which was a
few days away. I was sufficiently out of
it enough to freak him out, leading him to call the Moose to find out what
actually had happened (I guess I was not overly coherent!)
·
*A woman gave birth in the room next to me. Her screams never woke me up.
·
*Another woman gave birth in the other room next
to me, but she never screamed, just grunted twice and then bam, baby. I like to think that would have been me had it
not been for pre-eclampsia. Of course, I
was awake and sipping on my 70ml otherwise I would have slept through her too.
· *I posted a pic of bubs on facebook to announce
the birth (after sending a quick email to my mom and sister). Of course, I was going cross eyed trying to
do this, but I managed. My sister’s
husband was the first to read the news (while facebooking on the loo), and
announced it to my sister, who ran downstairs to tell my parents (who were
living in the basement for a few months).
**And best of all, at 10pm, my new
midwife came in to announce that the magnesium was finished! I cheered as best I could (a feeble but
enthusiastic “yay!”), and within minutes of it coming out, I was already
feeling better! By morning, I was much
more awake and alert! I could even eat
breakfast. And no more fluid
restrictions!!! And the Moose took me
down to see Bubs, and I got to do kangaroo care (or skin to skin or cuddles as
I call it!).
More to come on my next post,
Surviving the Fifth Circle of Hell (aka life on the post-natal ward).
Up next: Life in the 5th Circle of Hell (aka the post natal ward)
