I survived

It's been 10 days now since Brennan was born, I'm thankful I survived it. I was really dreading having another c-section, mostly the pain part and the actual surgery. It all went down much differently than expected too, which probably helped me have less anxiety simply because I didn't have much time to think about it.

I was scheduled for a c-section on the 26th of July. My Mom was flying in on the 25th to help us watch Sara and to be there for the birth. On the 25th, Dan went to pick Mom up at the airport at 12 p.m. Since we had a baby sitter we decided to go out for one last hurrah before the surgery in the morning. We went to see the new Harry Potter movie at 4:00 p.m.

At 4:30 p.m. my phone rang in the theater because I forgot to turn it off. I was bending over to get my purse and turn off the ringer when I felt a gush. I had been having trouble with my bladder so for a split second I thought, dang incontinence. However within about 5 seconds I realized that a massive amount of liquid was coming out so I grabbed my purse and started running, yelling back to Dan that my water broke. I'm sure lots of people heard it, the theater was packed.

I was running down the hallways of the theater leaving puddles and Dan was running behind me. All I could think to tell him was, "get me some pants". I was under the impression that there wouldn't be that much fluid and that it would stop at some point and I could just change my pants and walk out of the theater with some dignity. I was wrong about that. I ran into the bathroom and I was flooding the floors. When I sat on the toilet it stopped and as soon as I stood up again, woosh! I couldn't imagine that much water being in there. I used about a whole roll of toilet paper but my pants were totally soaked and I couldn't stop the fluid. So I called the hospital from the stall and said I was on my way. Then I tried to call Dan to tell him forget the pants at this point, just get me to the hospital ASAP, but his ringer was turned off from being in the movie.

I peeked my head out of the bathroom and saw a side exit, I decided to take it instead of walking through the busy lobby, just hoping the alarm didn't go off. Luckily only a couple of people saw me. I'm sure it was clear to them what my issue was, seeing how huge my stomach was in conjunction with the soggy pants and wet trail I was leaving. I saw Dan's car in the parking lot but couldn't find him. Then I saw him running at full speed from K-mart just up the street. He had purchased a pair of pants for me to wear.

I told him I'm sorry that I just didn't know what to do but that I thought it was pointless for me to put on different pants now. So we used the k-mart bag for me to sit on in the car and off we went. We got up to the freeway and the traffic ground to a dead halt. Luckily we were able to get off at an exit and take back roads all the way up to Orem. It took longer than the freeway would have, if it had been moving, but at least we were moving towards the hospital. If we had gotten stuck on the freeway I know I would have had a panic attack.

Dan dropped me off in front of the hospital and immediately when I stood up, woosh! The nurses saw me and made some comment about how it was clear I was in labor, due to my soaked jeans. The amazing thing was that they had me prepped and ready to go into surgery by 6:30 p.m. and by 7:07 p.m. we had a baby!

The surgeons all said "WOW" when Brennan came out, they remarked on how huge he was. They said it was the biggest baby they'd delivered in a long time. He weighed 10lbs 10oz and was 20.5 inches long. I only got to see him briefly as they poked his head over the curtain. I craned my neck to look behind me over at the table he was on as the nurses were working on him. Luckily Dan got to stand with him and came over to give me updates and reports.

Because Brennan's blood sugar was low and he was having a little trouble breathing, they kept him in a special unit in the hospital for several hours before I got to see him. It was really hard for me to wait that long before I even got to see him. Dan got to go and see him a few times. After about 5 hours I got wheeled in to see him and he looked strange to me. He didn't look anything like I had imagined. His face was really swollen and I didn't recognize any of his features. He sure was cute though!

Over the next few days, we got to know our little one. He had to stay in the special nursery at the hospital and sadly he was hooked up to all kinds of monitors and had an IV coming out of his head. We hated HATED it!! I'm sure he did too. Another thing I hated was that they took out my morphine drip less than 24 hours after labor but I still had to walk a long way down the hall to see Brennan every 3 hours. It was excruciatingly painful and their pain management sucked. There was one time I couldn't get out of my bed to go feed him because of the pain and it was very upsetting. Over the course of the 5 days I learned to page the nurses thirty minutes before I had to go feed him so that I could get pain meds, so that I'd be able to get out of bed and make it down there.

We met all kinds of people in the hospital and had all ranges of quality of care. Overall though we met some fantastic people and I have huge respect for nurses, they do the grunt work and I had some that really got me through it.

Overall, I'm so thankful that I got through it and that we went home with a healthy baby. He does have a little jaundice but it's getting better. He's such a chunk and adorable. He loves to sleep all the time and he eats a ton. Dan has said that he anticipated being excited about another child but he is even happier than he expected he would be. He keeps saying what a cute little monkey we made. We are so excited to see what his personality turns out to be, right now he seems so mellow. He's already sleeping 4-6 hours through the night and would probably sleep all night if we didn't wake him up to eat.

Sara is having some adjustment issues, she's throwing a lot more tantrums and having some accidents but overall she seems to be accepting him. Dan goes back to work next week and I'm hoping I can handle it by myself. I'm feeling like I can but it's just going to take some strategy and not worrying about little things that might fall through the cracks like dishes or laundry.

I'm really looking forward to healing from my c-section. I'm mostly off my pain meds now at 10 days out. I can finally sleep on my side again too!! I can't wait until I can sleep on my stomach too. Then mountain biking, but not too soon this time. Maybe by fall.