what a swell party it was…

so it seems like a lifetime ago that I was having a shower in the special antiseptic “body wash” prior to being admitted to hospital for the birth of our daughter…certainly not the way I had hoped this day would play out but in a few short hours we would be introduced to the person who would change life, as we know it, forever. I have to say the staff at the hospital have the process nailed and it’s hard not to feel like you are on a conveyor belt just waiting for the next part of the process to begin…check in, provide a wee sample, change into your gown, meet the anesthetist, have any remaining pubes removed, have a visit by the nurses and so on and so forth. when it becomes very interesting is when we finally get to the “theatre” and it kind of feels like someone has said “number 3 your caesarean section is ready”. to say it was bizarre would be an understatement. the epidural is a procedure I would be in no hurry to repeat ever, the claustrophobia I experienced when they tried to put an oxygen mask on me was intense. willy wonka had asked me if I had any preference for the music played during the procedure and I said I didn’t mind but really it would have been nice to hear david bowie singing is there life on mars as he held our baby girl aloft…surreal. I think it probably felt to scott and I like we had been slapped with wet fish when the gum boot wearing sidekick popped our perfect baby girl on my partially numb chest – we both look a bit like stunned mullets in the pictures now I look back on them. once they have wrapped her up and counted all the instruments to ensure nothing has “gone missing” baby girl and I are wheeled back to our room where I am sure scott can’t wait to change out of his hospital scrubs that kind of made him look a bit like he was in some bad medical porn movie. I cant feel my legs and I have compression tights on and the nurses have also put some wrap thing around my calves which is connected to a pump that will ensure the blood continues to flow through my legs – cheers for that – cause you could remove my legs right about now and I would be none the wiser. as the effects of the epidural wear off the pain begins and whoa nelly that is some serious pain, but I am in hospital and they have some serious pain killers so to be perfectly honest the rest of friday and parts of saturday are moderately blurry and I can remember snippets of midwives coming in to help me breastfeed and to pump me full of drugs. by saturday night I was in a different room and off the medication, thankfully. mind you the nursing staff were still trying to give me painkillers every time they popped in to check my vitals. at one stage a midwife said to me “you don’t have to put up with the pain you know” to which I replied no, but you do usually have to be in pain in the first place…I found it quite amusing that I could have had incredibly strong painkillers on a fairly regular basis but I could only have two panadol once every six hours…in all honesty the most pain I had after the initial shock from the epidural wearing off came from not being able to do a poo. so i ordered prunes for breakfast and they worked like a charm – this is definitely a sharing kind of blog. it was a very strange feeling being in the hospital and I didn’t realise how comforting it was at the time to know that the nurses, midwives and nursery were available at any time. when willy wonka said I could go home on the tuesday instead of the wednesday I was overjoyed but as we loaded our new precious cargo into the car I was overwhelmed with the enormity of the responsibility we now had – not unusual for me, to be overwhelmed that is. it’s time for some acupuncture…