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Life with my 2 + My Hospital Experience

Two weeks have passed since the arrival of my baby boy and let me just say…life is hectic! With one child, I was brand new to parenting and learning to adjust to taking care of someone 24/7 and trusting my own instincts. Now… it’s quite different. I have a 6-year old to handle (thank goodness she’s not younger!) and a newborn that has me running every 3 hours (if not more). To say that sleep is a thing of the past is an understatement. I asked my husband the other day how in the world did I do all of this when I was working.  His response: “Because you didn’t have a choice.” At that time I had to work, and now we are fortunate that I can be home to take care of the kids. The only differences I see between then and now are my age and the fact that I have two to keep up with.

With Aida, I would wake up around 4:30 am on a weekday to pump milk and have a quick snack. About 30 to 40 minutes later, I would wake up Denard to get Aida ready for daycare while I showered and got ready for work. I packed up my lunch and breast pump and Aida’s daycare bag and we were on our way out the door by 5:30 so I could get to work by 6:15. Lunch at work was a quick meal and more pumping. In the evenings, we would get home by 2:30 and I would nurse Aida and afterwards, I would make a quick dinner. We’d eat and then get our showers/baths for the night…more nursing and pumping between all of that. I am just tired trying to re-hash all of it in my brain. Now I know I was extremely tired. I even remember falling asleep at my desk a few times and going to work in sweatpants and sneakers a few days. It was rough!

Now… work is out of the equation but everything else is pretty much the same except I have a little helper. Now my little helper is sometimes helpful and other times… she runs away (lol!). Aida does her best to try to calm down Brayden when he is crying. At night though, if she’s partially asleep, she will just go “shhh…it’s okay, toot” and back to sleep she goes. It’s so funny because she is not completely awake herself. It’s like she has this automated response.

Other than the exhaustion, everything is going pretty good. The first week my husband took off work and my parents came to stay with us. It was nice having help but being me, I like to do things on my own.  I am a bit of a control freak and like things done a certain way or I get a bit crazy. Plus, being an introvert, I need that quiet time away from people to recharge for a bit. My milk supply is good and that made me really happy. Being in the hospital for almost 5 days was really stressful. I remember when one of the residents of the high risk OB group came to my room talking to me about my heart rate and how it was up. She asked if I had ever felt it before and if I could describe the feeling to her. I told her this – keep in mind I was asleep with my baby before she came into the room: “I guess the feeling is similar to what I felt just now. You burst into me room while it was dark in the middle of the night and I look up and see a stranger startling me out of my sleep. I gasped and had to catch my breath when I realized it was a person walking towards me. My heart was pretty much racing then…. I am sure that’s what it felt like.” Ohhh… that lady looked at me like I was so crazy, but I was just tired and could not even sleep because they kept wanting to check me, get blood from me or ask me all kinds of questions. Just..ugh! I definitely need to do a post about my hospital experience. It was scary because I had some life threatening issues going on and towards the end I was so annoyed that I was being a bully to any doctor that came my way.

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Discharge Day | 29 July 2014

I can say that I had some of the most wonderful nurses in labor & delivery triage and on the post-partum care floor. I could not tell those ladies ‘thank you’ enough. Kaitlyn, Kara, Alexia, Sam, Cyndy, Kristie, Miranda, Esther, Marianne…. if it weren’t for these women I might not have been able to stay as calm and hopeful as I did. They were my shoulders to cry on… listening ears…. and caregivers. That is a lot. For the life of me, I cannot remember my PICC nurse’s name but she was wonderful. She offered to watch Aida while I was being taken back for my c-section when she heard we did not have any family in the area. There was another nurse I had for a short period of time one night; she called the resident/OB group for me when they started ordering lab work and EKGs for me to see what was going on. It was like the doctors were not communicating at all with me. The nurses thought I knew what was going on but I had no clue. The day I was to be discharged, they discharged the baby around 9 that morning and I was supposed to be gone my 11 am. Well, the doctors did not want me to go even after the CT scan was clear of blood clots. The wanted to give me more meds and see what happened; they wanted me to stay another day but did not have the decency to discuss face-to-face with me. What makes it worse is that because I developed HELLP syndrome, I was transferred to the high risk OB group and no one told me anything. I kept wondering where my OB was that I had been seeing the last 8 months. When I found out that they didn’t want me to leave even though I was improving, I had the nurse to keep calling the doctors that were in charge of my care. Eventually, one came up when she heard what was going on and another was sent to come talk to me. Of course, the one that came on her own goodwill was the only one I could talk to. The other one was just being rude and condescending and I let her know I would not be addressing her… at all. I let them know I really did not appreciate them not coming to talk to me about my care. I asked her what was so bad about coming and talking to people when situations are changing. When I felt the urge to curse, because I knew they were spewing some B.S. in the conversation, I stopped talking and let Denard take over. By the end of the conversation, we came to an agreement that I would stay until 9 that night so that I could take a couple of doses of the new medication and they monitor my vitals. If things were still good, I go home. Well… guess who showed up after I caused an uproar? My OB! Oohhh Denard’s face dropped….I laughed… it was shocking. I could have died and had not heard from her but there she was after I had gave the other docs a piece of my mind. We talked; she let us know where she was for the weekend and that day she was practicing at a different hospital. Also found out, she does not even have privileges at the hospital I was at. She made sure to let us know that she would talk to the doctors about letting me go home and monitoring me the weeks after I go home. I was so relieved to be going home that day.

I really did not intend to get into all of this on this post… but it happened. I will close with a couple of photos of my two babies. They are not perfect but I love them for what they mean to me. :)

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braida-12aug2014-2

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6 comments
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  • INEATHIA coleman

    That was a wonderful and detailed experience. I feel so sorry for you doing that period of time. I’m happy you are enjoying your family now. Bryden is aa wonderful and healthy baby.ReplyCancel

    • Tronesia

      Thank you! I am definitely glad it is over. :)ReplyCancel

  • Your babies look pretty darned perfect to me! I’m sorry you had such a rough time at the hospital. Specialty docs forget that the patients are actual human beings–but in any case, they usually become specialty docs because they’re not super-good on the human relations scale. So you’re an interesting problem, but having you talk is a bit of a nuisance for them. *lol* I just had my own series of encounters with that type during my heart attack in June! It’s taken me two months to figure out what the heck is going on with me, what all the meds do and why I’m taking them, etc. etc. I’m still not even very sure what my prognosis is. Hopefully, your prognosis is being a Mom and raising two lovely human beings–the hardest task there is! I hope you are able to schedule plenty of alone time for yourself–having two kids (plus a neglected-feeling husband) is probably driving you nuts! Longest comment ever–I guess your post stirred up something in me. My very best wishes to you and your newly-configured family!!ReplyCancel

    • Tronesia

      You know, I never thought of the specialty doctors like that… you may have a point. The two that did my surgery were pretty okay…explained everything and even stayed with my during the prep to talk and answer questions. It was just everything after that was crazy. I am sorry you have to deal with that;you’d think when people are going through a serious health situation that doctors would be more inclined to let you know what’s going on so you can stay calm and positive. Thanks so much Heather for coming by and commenting. And long comment.. pshh…your comments help me see a different perspective every time.ReplyCancel

  • :LAUREN

    Oh they are perfect!!ReplyCancel